MILAN MANDARIC, the Portsmouth chairman, contacted four clubs yesterday for permission to speak to their managers about the vacancy at Fratton Park that has been created by the dismissal of Alain Perrin.

Simon Jordan, the chairman of Crystal Palace, quickly rejected an inquiry about Iain Dowie, but that left Neil Warnock of Sheffield United, the bookmakers’ favourite, in the frame, while Mandaric would not rule out an unlikely return for Harry Redknapp 364 days after he left the club.

Mandaric said that Portsmouth had a shortlist of five targets, four of whom were with other clubs and one who was free of other commitments. A British manager was the preferred option, but one of the original five was a foreigner with Premiership experience, believed to be Ruud Gullit, the former Holland forward and once manager of Chelsea and Newcastle United. Perrin, Mandaric said, had not appreciated what was required in the Premiership.

“He was a good man, a good coach, very hard-working,” Mandaric said. “Unfortunately, though, he underestimated the enthusiasm of the game here, the quality and the level. Maybe it was his personality. He’s very stable — not able to throw teacups in the dressing-room.”

That will not be a problem with Warnock, or even Redknapp, whose odds have been shortening by the hour. “You never in your life say ‘never’,” Mandaric said, dropping a further teasing hint that Redknapp would have a better chance of keeping Portsmouth in the Premiership than he had had at Southampton, who were relegated last season.

“I believe we have better players than Harry had when he took Southampton over, and I’ll be more aggressive (in the transfer window) than they were in January,” he said.

The aim is to have the new man in place before the visit to Tottenham Hotspur in a fortnight, which posed the question of why Perrin was sacked with no replacement lined up. “He [Perrin] knew this was going to happen sooner or later so you ask yourself if it’s the most honest thing to keep the guy,” Mandaric said.

“It’s my duty to do what is right for the club, not what is easiest for the chairman. I had a problem to keep lying to myself and him. Once the decision was made in my mind I might as well get it done.”

Perrin issued a farewell statement that was hardly a stirring defence of his record. “Having secured the club’s Premier League status last season I am disappointed that my adventure with Pompey has ended so quickly,” he said. “At a club where this season the objective was to stay in the Premier League the situation was difficult but not catastrophic.

“Results at the beginning of the season were affected by the late arrival of some key players, and illness and injury to other important players. I am sorry for our supporters that good performances at home did not reward us with the results we deserved.

“I would like to thank the players for their support and I believe that with reinforcements in attacking positions in January, the club can stay up.”

Mandaric has now lost six managers — Alan Ball, Tony Pulis, Steve Claridge, Graham Rix, Redknapp and Perrin — since becoming chairman.

“I’m going to be asked by supporters how many years we played in the Premiership, not the number of managers,” he said.

“Every change I made I tried to do for the benefit of this club. I made some mistakes. Am I going to make others? Probably one day I will, but no-one would appreciate a chairman who just let things go down. My supporters are the ones I report to and I do whatever is best for them.

“If I didn’t care for this club as much as they do, I wouldn’t go through this aggravation.”