By Joe Wood
Football is well and truly back isn’t it?!
Following a 3-3 with title favourites Leeds, Pompey hosted Luton in a spirited 0-0 draw. However, if you read the box-score and think to yourself, “ah must’ve been a bit drab”, you couldn’t be further from the truth.
Portsmouth in the Championship have so far been two completely different, and very identifiable teams.
On the surface of that you would ask, “what? They played one way against Leeds and then a different way against Luton?”
No. Not even close.
There is opening 10 minutes Pompey, and rest of the game Pompey.
Opening FC are genuinely abysmal. Over these two games, Opening FC should be definitely, at least, be 5-0 down.
Presumably, Leeds ground staff were on holiday until late, and so responsibility for testing the structural integrity of the goalframe fell to the players, as they rattled it 3 times in the same timespan it’s taken you to read this sentence.
Then, against Luton, the Opening FC midfield and defence arrived late to the ground and didn’t partake in the first 10 minutes, allowing Will Norris to absorb the onslaught from the newly relegated side.
But, just like the previous game in Yorkshire, there were 11 subs 10 minutes in and the real Portsmouth FC took to the pitch and played much better.
If only we could get rid of Opening FC, then I think Pompey will be fine this year.
In both the Leeds and Luton game, Pompey looked perfectly fine at this level. Lacking a bit of cutting edge, but it could definitely be worse.
Of course it’s hard to fully gauge a team against 10 men for an hour, and the title favourites, but even before Thomas Kaminski evolved into prime Recber Rüstü (or for those somewhat longer in the tooth, Toni Schumacher) Pompey looked like they could play at this level.
TRANSFER OBSESSION
I’ve flipped flopped over the last couple of weeks thinking we needed to get 8 or 9 through the door, to maybe, just 3 or 4.
I’m not going to pretend to be smart enough to tell you who Pompey should be targeting, but something that has struck me in this window, is our obsession with former players.
Obviously this has been fed with the signings of Pack, Ritchie and bringing back Swanson. But I have honestly never seen any other clubs fanbase so relentlessly persue former players.
We have seen, this summer, the rampant swathe of Kamara shouts, in amongst the begging for Robertson and pleas to Conor Chaplin to come back to PO4.
But for a while, it was a bit of a joke that we would have a transfer window, and someone in the Pompey Twitter-verse would see Ben Thompson in B&M in North End, “says he’s coming”.
I get the attachment to these players that have done well for us, I really do, but before these guys came to the club, they were relatively unknown by the fans. They then performed brilliantly and we understandably want that to continue.
But it can’t always. And in football it rarely does.
We have to have faith that Rich Hughes and John Mousinho can find the next Abu Kamara or Ben Thompson, and not just have a groundswell of people saying “Who?! Why have we signed him?!?!”
Which brings me nicely onto my final point…
SHOW AMBITION
Ok, that was a little unfair to use this sub heading, but you know exactly of whom I speak.
We recently had the fan forum hosted by BBC Radio Solent, and as is always the way these things run, questions were emailed in ahead of time to provide content if the room dried up.
Well, our protectors of the club and enemies of airspace, emailed some questions in.
Supposedly…
Because they’re anonymous, so even if they had, you couldn’t know it was from them…
Which means they couldn’t have had their questions selectively withdrawn from being asked…
But, logic be damned, the anonymous group, responsible for terrorising avian life over PO4 in aid of a pointless cause, were apparently also in attendance.
You know, where they could have…. Asked a question?
And this is what it all comes down to. They’d rather be completely anonymous, throwing faeces from the sidelines, than actually contributing anything meaningful.
They’re semi responsible for the slew of people that assume because someone is a free signing, that means they’re rubbish.
It’s a baffling train of thought for me, because you haven’t even got to look outside the clubs history to find that just simply doesn’t track.
John Marquis cost over £1m in League 1, and if you ask most Pompey fans, he was only really a threat to the physical scoreboard above the Milton End, and not the one that actually matters.
Paul Merson on the other hand, was free. Did that make him rubbish?
If you don’t like that example, Conor Shaughnessy was a free signing. Marlon Pack was a free signing. Two of our best players last year in a title winning side.
All this equating ambition to spend is madness. If Pompey identify a player and he can be signed on a free and does well for the club, that’s good business.
Ambition and net spend do not have to go hand in hand. You can be ambitious whilst maintaining your budget.
Are Chelsea the most ambitious team ever seen in football
At this point, I’m not 100% convinced they don’t support Southampton, because they seem completely unwilling to support Pompey at all.
I’m all for contrasting opinions, it makes the game fun, but really, only when you know that the point is being made in good faith and I don’t think they do.
