Andrew Fifield On The Premiership: Portsmouth's antique stands creaked under the weight of wagging tongues on Saturday.

The home supporters' chatter did not centre on their team's predictably futile attempt to halt the Chelsea juggernaut, but on who would be handed the onerous task of replacing the sacked Alain Perrin as their manager.

Sheffield United's Neil Warnock remains the favourite to become the Premiership's first managerial appointment of the season, but the most beguiling rumour sweeping in off the Solent suggested that the Southampton manager Harry Redknapp, who left Pompey last year after a cataclysmic falling-out with the chairman, Milan Mandaric, was also in the frame.

At any other club, the notion of a manager returning to work for a chairman who had previously accused him of betrayal and of spending excessively on agents' fees would seem absurd. But this is Portsmouth. The club has turned into a gross parody of itself after a year of backbiting, sniping, sacking and selling, and the reappointment of Redknapp would merely be the appropriate coup de gràce.

Pompey's fans will be exasperated by it all, but their solace stems from the knowledge that Perrin is no longer in charge. The Frenchman's expression of bug-eyed bemusement at his team's deficiencies had been growing more pronounced with each passing week, and Mandaric finally put him out of his misery last Thursday.

Chief among his failings was his tactical nous, or lack of it. Pompey's match tickets this season should have come with a note of caution: "Warning: Attempts to decipher Portsmouth's formation can seriously damage your health."

Perrin tried a variety of patterns, each more outlandish than the last, and eventually settled on 3-3-3-1. He pointed out that few managers had ever used it and, after watching his players attempting to put it into action, it was easy to see why.

Mandaric has now decided on a change in direction. The next manager, he vows, will be British, because the British can best motivate and cajole underperforming players.

That is pure tosh, of course, but he is not alone in holding such views. The Premiership remains innately mistrustful of managers who are unable to quote Kipling and Shakespeare in pre-match pep talks, as if Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Martin Jol and Rafael Benitez allow their squads to drift by in a state of Zen-like detachment.

For proof of the effect of having a British, or Irish, manager, by the way, just take a glance at the league table: the bottom 13 clubs are all run by a "native", while five of the top seven are managed by Johnny Foreigner. More fool us.

In any case, Portsmouth have long since negated the need for a British boss. Mandaric himself is a Serb-American, while 10 of their 16-man squad against Chelsea hailed from outside Britain and Ireland.

Joe Jordan, a Scot, may favour more decipherable tactics than Perrin - he reverted to 4-4-2 on Saturday, the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding of football - but his nationality did not make on iota of difference. Portsmouth were defeated 2-0 with as limp-wristed a performance as they have produced all season.

Perrin did not lose games because he was French. He lost because his tactics were a mess and his players were simply not good enough. Watching Pompey try and score is akin to seeing a toddler attempt to climb stairs: they know what to do - they've seen others do it often enough - but the bodily mechanics are beyond them.

It seems the club's new manager will have to boast alchemy, as well as motivation, as one of his talents.

In the midst of the wreckage stands Mandaric, ringmaster of his own private circus. The fans still adore him - "There's only one Milan," they sang on Saturday, for which we give thanks - and it is true that before his arrival in 1999 Portsmouth were little more than flotsam and jetsam, bobbing along on the Hampshire coast. In the six years since, they have been transformed into an established Premiership club and have made more headlines than many of English football's more illustrious names.

There comes a point, however, when a chairman's lovable eccentricities turn destructive, and Mandaric seems to have reached it. His coaching staff are rudderless, the players are unsettled and the fans are beginning to lose heart.

Fratton Park's loudest moments on Saturday came, oddly, during the pre-match "silence" for George Best, which quickly turned into a standing ovation. The Pompey faithful saved their mournful introspection for the following 90 minutes.

They could be struck dumb for good if Redknapp returns this week. It is a move that would strip Mandaric, and by extension the club, of its last remaining vestiges of credibility.

But these are desperate times and the chairman's innate love of the theatrical makes it an intriguing possibility. With Portsmouth, it is always wise to expect the unexpected.