Soccernet ProfilePaul Hart Born: May 4, 1953
Birthplace: Golborne, Lancashire, England
Previous Clubs: Chesterfield; Nottingham Forest; Barnsley; Rushden & Diamonds
Honors: None
Hart's brief reign as Portsmouth boss was ended by club management in November 2009 with the club languishing rock bottom in the Premier League.
The former youth boss has taken over until the end of the season.
Following seven straight losses to start the 2009-10 campaign, Hart's team managed a mini-revival to pick up seven points in the next five games, but a 1-0 loss away to Stoke was Hart's last game in charge before Portsmouth management ran out of patience. In the statement announcing his axing, the club thanked Hart for his efforts and admitted the limited financial resources he had to work with.
Hart had been given the reigns at Portsmouth for the back end of the 2008-09 season after Tony Adams was sacked at the start of February.
He was appointed Director of Youth Operations at the south coast club in March 2007, but took over as caretaker manager after Adams' failed spell, while Brian Kidd was named as his assistant, and took over full-time in July 2009 when he signed a two-year deal.
As a player, Hart started his career at Stockport County in 1970, before moving to Blackpool where he notched up nearly 150 appearances for the club, becoming an ever-present in defence.
In 1978 he left relegation-bound Blackpool for Leeds United, for a fee of £300,000, where he spent five years. Making just short of 200 appearances for the Elland Road outfit, he chose to move on and signed for Nottingham Forest in 1983.
He lasted two years at Forest, playing in the controversial 1983-84 UEFA Cup semi-final against Anderlecht, before transferring to Sheffield Wednesday in May 1985.
With his playing career winding down, Hart had injury-plagued spells for Birmingham City and Notts County; before he retired in 1988. He started his managerial career as player-coach at Notts County, but quickly got his first break and was appointed boss of Chesterfield in 1988.
He was at Saltergate for three years, but a dispute with his chairman resulted in his sacking in 1991 and he moved into youth team coaching.
First back at Forest, and then again at Leeds, Hart saw his young charges win the FA Youth Cup in 1993 and 1997, before he fell out with Leeds' manager George Graham and returned to Forest.
In 2001, Hart rose to the position of manager at Forest as he took over from David Platt, who had left to take charge of the England Under-21 side. Forest reached the play-off semi finals in 2002-03, losing in extra-time to Sheffield United, but financial constraints and the loss of key players eventually contributed to a run of two wins in 22 games, which saw him sacked.
In early 2004, a month after his previous job, he moved to Barnsley but was unable to galvanise the club's promotion challenge and was sacked a year later.
He was not back in football until May 2006, when he took over as manager of Rushden & Diamonds; but only lasted until October after a poor run of results.
In March 2007, he was appointed Director of Youth Operations at Portsmouth and after two low-profile years, took full control after Tony Adams' sacking in February 2009.
Given the job until the end of the season, amid speculation that the likes of Sven Goran Eriksson and Avram Grant were first choice, Hart's experience and relationship with the players swayed the decision when no big name came forward and he was able to keep the club in the top flight.
With the takeover of the club by Abu Dhabi billionaire Sulaiman al-Fahim confirmed, he signed a two-year deal to lead the side in the summer of 2009. But, after a disastrous start to the campaign, the club's patience ran out and they ended what had been a amicable and otherwise successful relationship, particularly with regards to Hart's management of the youth set-up.
soccernet.espn.go.com/players/manager?id=92&cc=5901Guardian
Saturday interviewPaul Hart proves his mettle as Portsmouth's salvage specialistThe manager has had to be an accountant, salesman and agony aunt to keep Pompey alive
Buzz up!
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Daniel Taylor guardian.co.uk, Saturday 7 November 2009 Article history
Paul Hart takes a break after training from his all-consuming job to save Portsmouth from relegation after severe financial problems, mass player sales, a transfer embargo and protracted takeover negotiations. Photograph: Tom Jenkins
Paul Hart would like it to be known that, contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, he did not describe Portsmouth recently as football's equivalent of Fawlty Towers. He did, however, say that life at Fratton Park had begun to resemble a sketch from the old comedy. One of those moments, presumably, when things were getting so on top of Basil that his default setting would kick in and he would reach down to his knee, clutching an imaginary shrapnel wound and trying his best to look in pain.
The good news for Portsmouth is that Hart is a man of substance. He has never been one to sulk, or hide, or feel sorry for himself, even in those moments when he, too, must have felt like releasing a bit of pent-up frustration by, for example, finding an Austin 1100 to whack with a stray branch. Instead, he has quietly got on with his business with dignity and resilience and a sense that he has to lead by example – and not get down.
But it has been difficult, to say the least. At one point during this interview, Hart breaks off from detailing how the south coast club was so close to being shipwrecked to throw out his arms in exasperation and ask: "Who would want to take this job on?" It has been a story of precarious finances, of the club's better players leaving and of the ones who replaced them not even getting their wages at one point. Throw a transfer embargo into the equation and two protracted takeovers of the club, and it is easy to see why Hart describes it as his hardest experience of almost 40 years in the game.
"When we came back for pre-season training on 9 July we had 14 players," he says. "We'd lost [Lassana] Diarra, [Jermain] Defoe, [Peter] Crouch, [Glen] Johnson, [Sol] Campbell, [Sylvain] Distin; nearly a full team. I ended up taking some names out of the youth team and telling the media we had a squad of 20. I didn't want to be deceitful but, at the same time, I didn't want the opposition to know how bad it had got either because the truth was pretty embarrassing.
"Publicly I'd say: 'No, it's not the full picture,' but, in reality, that was it: 14 players. We went to Portugal to play a two-game tournament and in the first match against Vitória Guimarães we had eight players under 21, two of them 17. Then we played Benfica the next day with triallists in our team. It was difficult for everybody. The players weren't daft, either. They could see what was going on."
How Hart operates would be beyond the comprehension of many of his Premier League counterparts. He has had no assistant manager this season after Brian Kidd chose to return north and has still to fill the gap after Gary McAllister could not agree terms with Peter Storrie, the club's chief executive, last month.
As Portsmouth were threatened with administration, the club raised £35m by dismantling their FA Cup-winning team. There were only two days of the transfer window left when the restraints were finally lifted and Hart was allowed to go into the market to bloat his squad with bargain buys, free transfers and loan deals.
In the circumstances it should probably come as no surprise that Portsmouth did not take a point from any of their league games in August and September, although they have since won two of their last four, including the 4-0 defeat of Wigan Athletic last weekend. Regular Pompey-watchers will know that the team has been much better than their results suggest.
"We lost our first seven league games, which is unprecedented in this league, but we've never put out a team that has looked like Rag Arse Rovers," Hart says. "The first game, against Fulham, we had 15 shots then one goes in our net off someone's backside. We go to Birmingham, miss an open goal and they get a debatable penalty with a minute to go. We lose to Bolton in the last minute. We batter Spurs. We batter Everton. There's never been a team at the bottom of the league who have played like this. We've been organised, competitive, attacking. We've worked hard. We haven't lied down. The spirit has been great, the performances excellent, all that's been missing is turning the performances into wins because winning makes people happy – and our club needs a bit of happiness."
There were 14 games to go when he took over last season, with Portsmouth in the bottom three. Hart led the team to safety but, Fratton Park being the unstable place that it is, he has had to contend with near-unremitting speculation that he might be replaced.
"Other people had the chance before I took it and they all backed away, didn't they?" he says. "There was a third of the season to go, 14 games to save the club. But they all backed off because we were in the bottom three. If they had any mettle they could have saved the club from relegation but nobody was banging on the door saying, 'Go on, I'll save you.'
"I remember a friend of mine saying: 'Where are all these bastards then? Get them in, let's see whether they can do it!' I like it here. I like the people I work with. I like hearing those supporters. But it's been like that ever since I took the job. I heard Mr [Sulaiman] al-Fahim say after the takeover in May that he wanted a high-profile manager. Fine, I have no problem with that. But the reality is, who would want to deal with all this?"
He considers himself, first and foremost, a coach. But to manage a club with these problems, he also has to be an accountant, a salesman and an agony aunt. "The players have kept me sane. They have been fantastic. Some of them have been here only a short time and they've had all sorts thrown at them, their salaries not being paid, new owners, we've been on the back pages every day and never for football, but they have been brilliant. This club hasn't had any investment for 12 months now and we did all our shopping on the last two days of the deadline. I was just honest with the players. I told them, 'We haven't got this, we haven't got that.' But we made sure we chose players who all had something to prove."
At Chesterfield, where he was manager for 14 months in the late 80s, they still talk about the day Hart put his fist through the dressing-room door. Eddie Gray, once his manager at Leeds and who later worked with him as part of the club's backroom staff, remembers him as a "tremendous coach with exceptionally good judgment" but also "fiery, explosive and intense".But Hart is 56 now, more restrained, less temperamental. "It's still there," he says. "It comes out every now and again but I have mellowed and I am more effective that way. People think I'm intense but I've reached an age now where I pick my fights. Brian Kidd said to me: 'You could have a fight every day if you want.' It was true, too. I could have a fight every single day. But I'm more selective these days. I remember being manager at Nottingham Forest when I had a fight every day and, before that, at Chesterfield. But I listened to Kiddo, he's a great friend and mentor of mine, and it was good advice."
Can he switch off at night? "It's an all-consuming job. Sometimes I go to bed thinking about it and wake up thinking about it. It's difficult to get away from it. I'm in for work at half seven every day." Do other managers sympathise? "Sympathy is not the right word, it's empathy. Everyone knows the problems because it's all been played out in the public eye."
And, besides, the thrashing of Wigan has brought a new sense of hope, especially on the back of another 4-0 win, in the Carling Cup against Stoke City. A win today at third-from-bottom Blackburn Rovers would lift them off the foot of the league. "It's not sympathy we need," Hart says. "It's points."
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2009/nov/07/paul-hart-portsmouth-interview
