Vital Pompey Members Corner

Does success suit Pompey Fans?

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I often wonder whether being successful actually suits Pompey Fans. Allow me to explain.

I personally, as all Pompey Fans should be, are extremely chuffed living the dream that is the FA Cup, loitering around the upper reaches of the Premier League and now the UEFA Cup competition. However, we still fail to fill our stadium, often noting empty seats at the Milton End and South Upper, yet a reported 200,000 fans(?) turned out to see the FA Cup come to Pompey in that glorious day in May.

I remember watching Pompey play Derby last season, and it was during that game that I finally came to conclusion that success doesn’t make our fans necessarily passionate, but defiance does!! Having our backs to the wall brings out the best in our fans. Derby took the lead in that game, and suddenly the noise levels rose significantly to the point it kind of mirrored the days when we were scrapping in the lower reaches of the Championship; We scored, we took the lead, then it was if the passion had been sucked out of the fans and quietness descended, like I said, it doesn’t suit our fans – or are our expectations set too high?

It could be that with success comes cost, more games, more expense, less attendance, less passion, I don’t know, but one thing is for sure, we will have that passion and atmosphere against AC Milan as we’ll not be able to help ourselves from showing off to Europe as to who we are (clapping to Mike Oldfield???), yet come the Fulham game, we’ll be back to the same old routine, empty seats, fragmented passion and hopefully a win.

This is just my personal take and observation, I for one, live and breath Pompey and hope that the new generation of fans coming through are not complacent enough to expect the kind of success we have experienced over the recent past. Go grab some archives of our dark days and crank up the volume and take a listen…..

Written by Different Gravy.

The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece, sometimes solely theirs. They are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Site Journalists.

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