Steve Cotterill looking forward to Fratton Park reunion
Steve Cotterill has opened up on ‘incredibly tough times’ at Fratton Park as he prepares for a reunion at his old stomping ground tonight.
Shrewsbury, with two defeats from their opening two league games, are the visitors to what is likely to be a white-hot atmosphere at Portsmouth this evening, after the hosts opened up with back-to-back victories and sit second.
The experienced boss, 57, counts Pompey as one of eight former clubs in his 26-year managerial career. Cotterill’s stay at the club, which was steeped in administration issues, came between June 2010 and October 2011, when he was poached by Nottingham Forest.
Tonight’s third league contest of the season is the first time Cotterill has faced a former club since his Salop appointment last November. He also has League One tussles to come against the club he started out in management in England with, Cheltenham.
“Someone said to me the other day that in the four-year spell with me in between it was the only year they hadn’t been relegated, having been relegated just before I got there and afterwards,” Cotterill said of his season-and-a-bit stint in the Championship with Portsmouth.
“The club went through an incredibly tough time, certainly when I went there, I remember when taking the job asking ‘how long would it be before we’re out of administration?’ And I was told six weeks – six months later we were still in it.
“When we did come out of administration the owners that took over put it back in administration. It went through an incredibly tough period for the supporters down there, because it’s them left there all the time.
“They were incredibly tough times but I made a lot of really, really good friends that I’m looking forward to seeing down there tonight. They were great people through some really, really tough times.
“Not everybody gets to know how bad it actually was, but you don’t want to say too much and put your old club down. There’s certainly some interesting times I had there as manager under the owners.”
Danny Cowley’s hosts have opened up with narrow wins over Fleetwood and Crewe and find themselves second in the early reckoning. Cotterill knows his Town team, who are still dealing with injuries to Shaun Whalley and Ryan Bowman while Ethan Ebanks-Landell is missing with Covid, need to get up and running.
A crowd of almost 11,500 roared Portsmouth on to a 2-0 home win over Crewe on Saturday and the anticipation of a night under the lights, where Shrews will be backed by a few hundred travelling fans, is not lost on Cotterill.
He added: “John Westwood will be in the home end with his bell. I’ll be looking forward to that and seeing a big crowd at Pompey.
“It is a special club down there, I said that at the time and it really is.
“It’s out on a bit of a limb down there but it is a really, really good football club.”
