Tony Adams returns to his north London alma mater this afternoon hoping to use Portsmouth as the springboard to fulfil his ambition to manage Arsenal one day, but at present he is doing a belly flop and he accepts time is not on his side. Nine weeks into the job as Harry Redknapp’s successor, Adams has just seen Paul Ince sacked by Blackburn after only six months. “It could be my turn next,” Adams says. Portsmouth have won three of his 14 games and he lambasted their performances in losing their past two in the league to Bolton and West Ham as “awful”. By his own admission, they concede too many goals (24 so far) and a big improvement is needed if today’s return to the club he served so well for two decades is not to bring another morale-sapping defeat.

Blackburn’s abrupt ditching of Ince was an uncomfortable reminder of the impermanency of modern-day management and Adams trotted out the stats when we renewed old acquaintance: “Seven hundred and sixty-five dismissals since 1992, 34 in season 2007-8 and the average tenure is down to one year and five months.” Adams lasted 12 months in his first venture into management, at Wycombe.

“The trouble with this country is that we rip up and discard generations of good technical coaches,” he said. “Look at the generation above me. Glenn Hoddle was an outstanding coach. Glenn was 38 when he got the England job, now he’s lost to the game. This game can kill you very quickly. How do I prevent it happening to me? I wish I had the key. But I’m not scared of it, which is a good starting point, and I’m making everyone conscious of that fact. I’m learning from the experience, and, whatever happens, you move on.”

When he does move on, Adams hopes it will be to Arsenal, whom he still regards as “family”. He won just about everything in his 22 years there, 14 as captain. Reeling off the honours sounds like The 12 Days Of Christmas: four league titles, three FA Cups, two League Cups, one Cup-Winners’ Cup. The partridge in a pear tree? He probably has that on his Gloucestershire estate.

How will he feel, going back? “I had 22 years there, for heaven’s sake, that’s a big chunk of my life. The place had an enormous effect on me. It’s a magnificent club and I’ll always be associated with them, but that’s fine by me.

“There’s obviously emotion attached to the fixture but I have to say it no longer feels like my home. Highbury was my home and my workplace, not the Emirates. Yeah, the people are still the same and it’s lovely meeting old buddies but the stadium feels weird to me. There’s a different atmosphere.

“Memories . . . my first experience of watching Arsenal was in the old east lower stand. We got a corner and this woman stood next to me and started the crowd going, ‘Willie, Willie’ as Willie Young went upfield. Fantastic, I was hooked.”

And as a player? “I could tell you loads of stories, great stuff for after-dinner speaking. One about Peter Hill-Wood springs to mind. It’s from the period when Bruce Rioch had left and Arsène was coming. We were managerless and Peter phoned me from New York, where he spends a lot of time — his wife is American. I was out and about when my mobile rang.”

At this stage, Adams slips into Hill-Wood’s clipped, Old Etonian tones. “‘Tony, chairman speaking’. Now I’d had a good few wind-ups down the years and I’ve gone, ‘F*** off, who’s this?’ ‘No, no, it’s the chairman, the chairman. I believe the s*** has hit the fan back home. Don’t panic. Good man coming. Hold the fort, back soon’. It was classic Peter. He didn’t say it was Arsène Wenger coming but when he got back he said, ‘David Dein has found this guy from Nagoya Grampus Eight called Wenger who is going to be fantastic’. He was right of course. Losing David has been a big miss.”

The Emirates doesn’t feel like home but Arsenal, the institution, will always be family. “Ken Friar still calls all the old captains every Christmas Day to wish them Happy Christmas. When Portsmouth got to the Cup final last season I had a voice message on my mobile. ‘Hello Tony, it’s Ken Friar. Just want to wish you all the best today. Go and win it, you know Arsenal boys always do’. When I got the job here, it was the same. ‘Congrats, you’ll be a huge success’. Lovely touches.”

Is Adams surprised by Arsenal’s creeping decline? “Not really. They are in transition. They’ve got a lot of young players but not much experience. I remember when Sol and Ashley were about to go, I said to David Dein, ‘You need to hold on to these guys. Too many seem to be leaving at the same time’. I’d retired, Patrick went, Dennis left, Dicko and Bouldy went. There was a tremendous turnaround in the space of two years — usually it should take about six. There was nobody left to pass on the old standards in the way we used to and the way Manchester United have done.”

Wenger and Co will take longer than this season to regain the pre-eminence they once enjoyed, but Adams can see it happening. “I don’t think they are far away. I’ll swap jobs if you like,” he said, not entirely in jest. The day he was appointed by Portsmouth, he warned his old mentor he was coming. “What I meant was that I wanted his job. I’d love that job. Arsène is showing no signs of moving at the moment but it is my ambition to manage Arsenal Football Club.”