Portsmouth: Paul Merson recalls £10,000 error he made at Fratton Park
Paul Merson joked how he once cost himself £10,000 by helping to get Portsmouth promoted to the Premier League.
The Pompey cult hero was a shining light of the side who were promoted to the top tier in the 2002-03 season.
But the culture shock of playing at Fratton Park at the time and it ended up costing him a five-figure sum, while benefitting the kitman.
Speaking to BBC Scotland’s Sacked in the Morning podcast, in quotes reported by The News (23 March), Merson said: “I’ll tell you a quick story when I was at Portsmouth.
“So I signed for Portsmouth, so first day’s training – now I’ve come from Villa and Villa’s an unbelievable football club, it doesn’t get the recognition, and the size of the club, it’s just a massive football club. I loved it at Villa, I mean I probably played my best football at Villa over a consistent amount of time.
“So I go into the dressing room after training one day and I take all my kit off and I throw it on the floor, in the middle of the dressing room. At Arsenal and places like Villa and all that, they wash your kit, you turn up the next day and all your kit’s hanging up or rolled up in a towel ready for training again.
“So I throw my kit on the floor and all the lads started laughing. I said: “What you laughing at?” They said: “We clean our own kit here!” I said: “Clean your own kit?” I said: “We’re a Championship team, what do you mean we clean our own kit?”
“So straight away I’m thinking: “What have I done here?” So all of a sudden one of the lads went: “the kit man will clean it for you for £30 a month or £30 a week”, something like that it was. So I was on a big bonus if we got promoted, so I said to him: “I tell you what, Kev, clean my kit for nothing and at the end of the season, if we get promoted, I’ll give you £10,000;
“We got promoted, didn’t we! Portsmouth had finished bottom six every year for the last 10 years and we went and won the league! He went to me: ‘I can’t have cash, can I?’ I had to meet him at the service station with £10,000 for cleaning my kit!”
Paul Merson makes comedy error in Portsmouth promotion season
The 2002-03 season is among the most famous in Pompey’s history as the club earned an unlikely promotion to the Premier League under the stewardship of Harry Redknapp and to this day that campaign is revered by supporters.
Merson was a mercurial talent and coming to the end of his best days by the time he arrived at Fratton Park, where the facilities were probably a little different to what he had experienced with the likes of Arsenal, Aston Villa and Middlesbrough.
But his loss was the kitman’s gain as a promise is a promise. Merson did his bit in helping to get Portsmouth to the top tier of English football but he had to stump up for the cash after having his kit cleaned for free.
To this day, Merson still speaks about the club with great fondness and has spoken of how he thinks that campaign was arguably the best football he played in his entire career. Just maybe he wishes he hadn’t been so glib about his offer to get his kit washed!
In other Portsmouth news, one youngster’s future at Fratton Park is surely over.
For more Portsmouth news, follow us on Facebook or join our brand new WhatsApp Channel for instant updates to be sent straight to your phone.