We tried our best to keep David James, say Portsmouth

End of the road: Pompey say they did not offer England keeper David James a player-coach role after his contract expired
Andy Hodgson11 April 2012

Portsmouth today denied offering David James a player-coach role but insisted they did all they could to try to keep the England No1.

The 39-year-old's contract expired at the end of last month and although there were talks over a new one, the Championship club withdrew an offer after failing to reach an agreement.

James was also linked with the manager's job after Avram Grant resigned in May but the club appointed Steve Cotterill.

That led to talk the goalkeeper was being offered a dual job, which would see him involved with the backroom staff.

However, chief executive David Lampitt said today: "We spoke to him about a role in a transition period going from the playing side to the coaching side. That was part of the discussions. But it's not the case that he was offered a specific role as player-coach.

"My gut feeling is that I don't think he wanted the manager's job. I don't think that was a factor in anything."

Lampitt said Pompey had decided to finish talks because they wanted to end the uncertainty with just two-and-a-half weeks to the start of the season.

He said: "From my point of view, we did our absolute best in trying to keep him. We had various meetings with him and the process went on for quite a long time.

"It got to a point where we needed to have some certainty and we need to look at other options for goalkeeper. We kept the offer open for as long as we reasonably could to try to give us the best opportunity of retaining him. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened."

Neil Lennon will meet James this week as he tries to persuade him to join Celtic. The Hoops boss will have talks with him after the club return from their pre-season tour of America, which ends with tomorrow's match against Sporting Lisbon in Boston.

Lennon believes the veteran would be the perfect replacement for Artur Boruc, who has joined Fiorentina, and has been encouraged by the fact the player's agent made the first move by contacting Celtic.

"We are still a long way off and it's early days in terms of negotiation," said Lennon. "But just the fact he is interested is very encouraging from our point of view. I want to get the best goalkeeper I possibly can.

"Not only for the league and Europe but also someone who can fill Artur's shoes — and he's one who can."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in