2015/16 Prediction League; Game 6 v Portsmouth FC (away)

Div3North · 02-09-2015, 22:24

Portsmouth

V

Accrington Stanley

Prediction League 2015/6; Game 6 v Portsmouth (away)

The thing about statistics is that they can’t lie

.......... How you present and interpret them, though; that’s a whole different bed of calceolarias ........

Portsmouth are currently 4th in League 2, with 11 points from 5 games; they’re behind Leyton Orient on 15, Plymouth on 12, and Wycombe on GD (Wycombe’s is F7 A1, Pompey’s is F10 A5 – leading scorer Gary Roberts

with 3) ........... but if you look at their last five games in all competitions, they’ve drawn 0-0 at Crawley and 3-3 at home to Morecambe in the League (that’s the same Morecambe who did Notts Co 4-1, and dumped Walsall out of the PaintyThingy 2-0

), scoring the equaliser in the 90th minute and having been 3-0 down, lost 2-1 at home to Reading in the CapOne and 2-0 at Exeter in the JPT, and won just the once – 2-1 at Luton (who’ve started the season with 2 points out of a possible 15 – and they got one of those in the 90-somethingth minute!). Four of those five games were against League Two opponents; did they play weakened sides? Maybe, but a club like them, with the squad and the money they’ve got

, should have a League Two second string, and an excuse is always an excuse .......If you want it a different way, they started with 6 points out of 6, and have since got 5 out of 9, which could easily have been 4 if the ref had blown earlier against Morecambe!

And the winner at Luton came in – you guessed it – the 90th minute, so it could have been 2 points out of 9 (if the ref had blown earlier there as well

). And, by the bye, two of their three League wins have come against the sides currently sitting in 22nd and 23rd places in the table (Luton and the Daggers

).... It’s a funny old game, football!

We always draw against them at our place (well, twice is always – just ask my wife!

) and we’ve won one (3-2) and lost one (1-0) when we’ve played them on Chimer’s

Back Lawn; P4 W1 D2 L1 F6 A6 Pts 5; bragging rights available, methinks!

Cookie (who remembers 77 Sunset Strip?

) did a rare old spring clean in the summer (can you do a spring clean in the summer?

), throwing everything out; 14 left (not counting loan returns); MF Jed Wallace went to Wolves for £275,000; defenders Danny East (23) and Ben Chorley (32) went to Grimsby and Bromley respectively; Nicky Shorey went to FC Pune City (I mis-read that as “Prune City” the first time

) who play in the Indian Super League and are managed by David Platt

; MF Wes Fogden went to Yeovil; Ryan Taylor to Oxford, and fellow forward Craig Westcarr ended up at Mansfield; MF Andy Barcham moved on to the Wombles, and ex skipper and Austrian international MF Johannes (“Johnny”) Ertl was released and is currently, I think, mowing the lawn on a Saturday

; oh, and ex-Oxford striker Tom Craddock swelled the ranks at Guiseley (“The Lions”) in the Conference, alongside Rob Atkinson

and Will Hatfield , Oli Johnson, and goodness knows who else ......

Pompey spent the £275k they got for Wallace and then some; £150k reputedly went to sign Paul Cook himself

(a bargain, d’you reckon Cashy?

) and £75k went on defender Christian Burgess from the Posh ......they also spent £undisclosed on Gary Roberts, and the same on Kal Naismith, who eventually made the match-day squad for the first time against Exeter in the Johnson’s, and got 24 mins as a sub and no goals

. Mind you, if your average home gate is 16 or 18,000, you can probably afford to spend some money ...... They picked up MFs Kyle Bennett from Donnie, Adam Barton from Coventry, the Blades’ Michael Doyle and Ben Davies, Ben Tollitt from Skem (wasn’t The King of the Penalty Takers there once?

) and Gareth Evans from Fleetwood (who signed Jimmy Ryan, of course); defs Matt Clark from Ipswich and Enda Stevens from Villa; and up front, Adam McGurk from Burton and (on loan) Jayden Stockley

from Bournemouth; QPR’s Irish GK Brian Murphy (didn’t he used to be in a TV series with Yootha Joyce?

) completed the list, which – at the last count – stood at 18, including four from the Youth system and two loan signings; they ain’t all going to get a game! Their other keeper, by the way (Paul Jones – ex Manfred Mann) was born in the delightfully-named hamlet of Snodland!

No, s'nod a joke - it's true!

Plymouth Boss Derek Adams isn’t happy with PC, it seems (neither is Cashy, but that’s a different tale

); he wants the FA to investigate Cook for expressing in the media an interest in Argyle’s prolific striker Reuben Reid ......... Mr Cook did talk about him, but was pretty clear that he isn’t going to be joining this transfer window (correct!). Philosophically, PC accepts that he must play on with what he has at the moment; while I’d agree with that, I might not have phrased it as he did;

“We want our fans thinking a signing makes us better when they see one”.

Fair enough on that one Boss; like Kal Naismith, obviously

. Then he went on,

“ ..... I believe we have enough tools in the building ...............”.

Well, you said it .................

Continuing our series, “Interesting Facts About ....” (which has proved so popular that it’s been syndicated across the whole of Barnoldswick

), we offer the following;

Player of the Year is something of a poisoned chalice at Fratton Park; the last three winners were Johannes Ertl (2103, released by PC), Ricky Holmes (sold to Northampton 6 months after he won the award in 2014) and Jed Wallace (sold to Wolves); Pompey had 7 players in the World Cup in 2010 – two from Algeria, two from Nigeria, one from South Africa and one from Ghana, and Calamity James

(who was inducted into the Portsmouth Hall of Fame in 2014!); their Kit manager is Kev McCormack; their longest serving manager was Jack Tinn - May 1927 to May 1947, managing 586 games and winning 229; in the last 20 years they’ve had 17 managers (Harry Redknapp twice), including Andy Awful (who was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2010!); their first-ever kit was a salmon-pink shirt, white shorts and maroon socks

; they changed it in 1909, and you can see why they would

......and finally, did you know that Peter Crouch was their most expensive signing twice?

£1.5 million in 2001 was followed by £11 million in 2008 .......I have to say I think they were done both times

...... he can’t dance anything like as well as his wife Abi!

Deadline for entries is, as always, scheduled kick-off time, which is 3.00pm on Saturday 5th September ........... I think a turn-up could be on the cards here (“Sean McConville hits the target with a penalty”

). And I’m totally confident that my mate Chimer can out-sing the pathetically small home following all on his own

......Can’t you, Chris?

Good luck to everyone

........Keep the Faith!

.............. STOP MISSING ******** PENALTIES!

(what sort of way to designate penalty takers is that anyway? You win it, you can take it? How much did we pay him for that piece of genius planning?

) ......And thanks for playing!