• Premier League

Pompey to ask Grant to stay on as manager

Portsmouth and Avram Grant were celebrating after reaching the FA Cup final on Sunday © Getty Images

Enlarge

Related Links

• News: Portsmouth shock Tottenham to reach FA Cup final
  
• News: Pompey keen to hang on to Grant
  

Portsmouth administrator Andrew Andronikou will ask manager Avram Grant to extend his stay at Fratton Park to help stabilise the club.

Andronikou believes Grant, who took Chelsea to the Champions League final in 2008, will be inundated with offers from England and abroad after guiding Pompey to the FA Cup final. However, he remains hopeful that Grant will be willing to remain in the Championship with Portsmouth.

Andronikou told Soccernet: "I plan to sit down with Avram and ask him to stay on. He has a contract that runs on, but it has break clauses, so I couldn't blame him if he took up one of the offers likely to now come his way.

"However, I plan to entice him to stay on. He has brought success to this club and, because of that, he will be a wanted man both in this country and abroad, but I haven't given up hope of keeping him here - far from it."

Grant will face former club Chelsea in the FA Cup final next month and, having been dismissed by Roman Abramovich two years ago, Andronikou feels the Pompey boss will be eager to prove a point.

"Yes, I know they remain close, they are still close friends, but Avram will be highly motivated in showing Chelsea and Roman what they are missing out on,'' Andronikou said. "He has found success at Portsmouth with zero money to play with, whereas everyone thinks it's easy to do well at Chelsea with so much money to play with."

Andronikou also promised to splash out on the cost of a bus ride around the town if the club win the FA Cup. "If we win, we will have the traditional bus ride, it is something that I will agree to sanction. The reason is that I believe that the club does serve the community, and is central to the area,'' he said. "The fans of the football club have also suffered nine months of misery, not knowing whether their club will survive.

"The club needs to give something back to their fans, give the fans back their pride in the club, so we shall see, if we win the Cup, then yes, we will pay for the bus ride!"

The Administrator explained that the £85 million of debt was frozen when the club went into administration and that he has been busy pruning overheads, but that the cash flow has been helped by the revenue generated from the FA Cup run.

He confirmed: "We have gained a minimum of £1.35 million in prize money from the FA, and I would estimate that the spin offs in terms of merchandising and so on will come to an additional £600,000 to £800,000.

"If we win the Cup we will gain an extra £1.5 million... so perhaps we can afford the bus ride!"

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.