Credit where credit's due

Pompey chief executive Peter Storrie has come under increasing pressure recently as details of the club’s debt were made public.

The former West Ham and Notts County supremo – who, it is alleged by the Mail’s Charlie Sale began his career in football by selling bibs and cones to Harry Redknapp – earns a seven-figure salary, the largest for a chief exec in the Premiership.

And some Pompey fans are, justifiably in my view, questioning how he can be held up as a white knight over his ‘introduction’ of the new owners, when, in his role, he clearly presided over the mounting debt.

If Marks & Spencer was on the verge of administration and its chief executive Stuart Rose came out and said “Well it was what the board wanted so I went along with it – but it’s not my fault” do we really think he would be held blameless? Bloody right he wouldn’t. He’d be out on his ear before you could say “This is not just any old sacking this is a Marks & Spencer sacking”.

Surely as chief executive Storrie is culpable? After all he – we have to assume – could see the problems mounting. If he didn’t realise the problem he should be sacked. If he did see and did not approve of the policy of over-spending why did he not simply resign and blow the whistle on it? Protecting that seven-figure salary we must assume.

I would have given him far more credit if he’d quit a long time ago and at least alerted everybody to what was happening. Instead he sat back raking in the greenbacks and told us for months on end there wasn’t a problem, until one day he changed his mind and said, actually it is quite bad here…

He has to be given huge credit for one thing, however: not many chief executives in football get their club’s owners on an eight-week sale-or-return basis.

Let’s hope the same agreement is in place for the current incumbent in case he proves faulty as well.