WHATEVER the reason, it’s killing Portmore United. At least for now.

With the possibility of relegation from the Digicel Premier League (DPL), Portmore United are desperate for answers to halt their crippling slide.

Portmore, one of the nation’s structurally sound and forward-thinking clubs, has been in an uncharacteristic freefall this season, which has landed them at the bottom of the points table. If they stay there, they will surely go down to the hellish settlement by their standards of the South Central Super League.

But how does one explain this slippage of a four-time champion and perennial contender for Jamaica’s top football title?

Its director Howard McIntosh says “It’s something that will require deep analysis”.

But he ventured anyway to give his views as to the possible causes for the club’s wretched run so far in the DPL.

“In the first instance where it relates to the playess, I believe there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction… there is some amount of self-actualisation problem from a player standpoint,” he said.

McIntosh suggested that the very thing that has made Portmore “relatively successful as a football club, could be the very thing that’s killing it”.

“The Portmore model has been developed in a particular way and there is definitely a export orientation to the model. We’re always trying to develop players to be international professionals that would be sold to the markets.

“The problem is that sometimes you keep selling some of the best players, the younger players, and… players who have been in the system for a while become dissatisfied when they don’t get contracts, and sometimes they become envious and… worried about their future and consequently, cannot contribute in a meaningful way and therefore are distracted,” he said.

Portmore have successfully traded players to the international professional stations and this, McIntosh claims, may be festering “disharmony and disaffection” that has demotivated some players.

“It’s the very success of our model that has contributed in some way to that problem. The team has not operated as a family united in many respects,” said McIntosh, an experienced football executive.

Former player and head coach Linval Dixon also cited a possible fallout created by players’ anxiety to sign with professional clubs overseas.

“Last year we went to Norway, and I believe most of the players were looking to get contracts, but only two players got, so a lot of people came back disappointed in a sense that they were not chosen.

“They came back in a negative frame of mind and I think this has been part of the problem, so after that they were just going through the motions,” said Dixon, who assists new head coach Neville ‘Bertis’ Bell.

There are those who believe that part of the problem could lie in the failure from a coaching point of view in getting Portmore’s “talented players” to click. But Dixon, a former national defender, disagrees.

“We’ve changed coaches and it’s the same, so I couldn’t say it’s a coaching problem. I must say that the players are not motivated as frustration has set in and so we’re lacking hard work,” he said.

From a coaching standpoint, it has been suggested that the club that transplanted from Clarendon as Hazard United and was rebranded Portmore United FC in 2003 may be constricting from the absence of the technical directorship of Horace Reid.

Reid had to withdraw from the club shortly after he returned to the post of general secretary of the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF), and so it is perceived that his highly-touted skills as a football thinker and technical mastery are sorely missing.

“One of the facts that we will have to face is that Horace Reid operated as technical director for the club for many years and because of his position at the federation, he has been forced to step away from the club, and that has created a void that obviously we’ve not been able to fill yet,” said McIntosh.

Club chairman Wayne Sinclair agrees that Reid’s contribution is gravely missed, but warned that the team’s “poor run” this season should not be pinned on any single factor.

“Horace Reid is probably one of the most gifted technical minds of football we have in Jamaica. When you lose somebody like him, it’s tough to replace,” he said.

Reid, who served the club from its inception some 20 years ago, is credited for guiding Portmore to their four Premier League titles — three of which were achieved in the past 10 years. Their first title was back in 1993. They repeated 10 years later as Hazard United before winning as Portmore in 2005 and 2008.

With 10 games to go in their desperate bid to resurrect their DPL fortunes in this time, it’s clear the troubled St Catherine-based club will have to do without Reid.

Portmore — with only 27 points from 28 games and in 12th spot — have come up woefully short in the goalscoring department, even with the vast potential within their ranks.

With Roen Nelson, the all-time scorer of 30 goals in a single Premier League season, on the roster, along with Christopher Nicholas, Steven Morrissey, Mario Swaby, Brian Bayliss, Tremaine Stewart, Kemeel Wolfe, Wolry Wolfe, Kevin Deerr, Carlington Smith, Gary McIntosh and Ricardo Cousin, goals are still hard to come by.

So grave is Portmore’s goalscoring record that their leading scorer McIntosh has only three goals to his name and he was last on the scoresheet in September last year. Nelson has only two goals in his miserable season.

To sum it all up, Portmore have scored only 16 goals, conceded 26 for a bitter -10 goal difference.

“I’m very disappointed as this club over the years is not accustomed to this position. We’re doing our best to get the players’ spirits up and turn this around… we’ve tried various things, but we still have not turned the corner.

“We’re just not getting the goals; though we’re playing good football and getting the chances, we’re not converting,” lamented Dixon, who was at the helm when Portmore lifted the Premier League crown in 2007/08.

Dixon, though, has an idea that may save Portmore. “I don’t think we’re putting in enough of the youngsters; we’re still going with players that have been there for five years or so.

“I don’t think that the older players are energised to get us out of the rough and therefore we need to look at the Under-21 level and see if we can find players,” he argued.

“Most of the other clubs have caught up on us… are banking heavily on their younger players, and we cannot change a gear at this time, and we were one of, if not the first Premier League clubs to use young players extensively,” Dixon added.

Meanwhile, McIntosh believes the drop in the psychological aspect of the players’ game is due partly to what he referred to as anti-Portmore activism from some quarters of the football constituency that has devastated the players.

“Club and the players have been affected by anti-Portmore sentiments that has crept up in the past two years, and that sentiment has to do with the relative success of the club in terms of trophies and also the transfers that have been done, and the people who have suffered most are the players who have been taunted everywhere they went and we underestimated the impact that it was having on them,” McIntosh explained.

He added that the £1.05 million transfer of midfielder Rodolph Austin to Norwegian Premier League outfit SK Brann in Norway in 2008 had drawn the wrath of many in the football fraternity — sheer professional envy, it seems.

“The transfer of Rodolph Austin in particular brought some amount of venom from all parts of the Jamaican football community; it was widely debated,” he noted.

What a tragic story it would be should this successful and progressive club go down, and what would that dreaded prospect mean for Portmore?

“If Portmore were to go down, it would herald dramatic changes at the club to begin with. If we’re not in a Premier League situation, clearly you will have to make radical adjustments to your human resource complement,” said Sinclair.

“In that situation, we would not have the Premier League Clubs Association and corporate Jamaica’s sponsorship, so clearly we would to take a massive revenue hit,” he added.

General manager Trevin Nairne is, however, brimming with confidence — a quality the players seem to lack — and says Portmore will prevail.

“Even though their confidence is low… they’re very optimistic that they’re going to come out of the rut, and like they, I’m sure we will not be relegated from this competition and we will start Sunday (today) by proving that point,” said an upbeat Nairne, referring to Portmore’s away game against 10th place and relegation-threatened Sporting Central Academy.

But Portmore’s troubles could have high-profile casualties, at least for Sinclair, who has thought about quitting, but remains undecided.

“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure on me, ultimately all of this fall on my head,” Sinclair noted.

Apart from winning the premiership, Portmore have won the national KO tournament four times; the JFF Under-21 league six years in a row; plus, they have one CFU Club Championship trophy.

Currently the club has two players — Eric Vernan and Damion Williams — on loan in Norway.

Portmore have successfully negotiated the transfer of Claude Davis (Derby County), Omar Daley (Bradford City), Rudolph Austin (SK Brann-Norway), Jason Morrison and Rafe Wolfe (Ferencvaros-Hungary), Demar Stewart (Chengdu Blades-China) and Roen Nelson and Wolry Wollfe (Joe Public-Trinidad).