Barry Eaton shares some views on the Pompey season, which they feel has been a good one, all things considered.
They said:
This season has, overall, been a really good one. In August we’d have snapped the hand off anyone who offered the chance of being near the play offs with half a dozen games to go.
We’ve had a load of our home-grown youngsters being given game time. Can anyone say that Ben Close, Brandon Haunstrup and Jack Whatmough haven’t been generally excellent when they’ve been in the team? Adam May will be a really good player for us too. And don’t forget, even though he hasn’t quite progressed as we’d all have hoped Connor Chaplin is still a young goal scorer.
Add in Matt Clarke, Jamal Lowe and even, for me anyway, a really good young keeper and we have, with the few experienced ones we have, a good foundation for next year and most of them are home-grown or developed by us.
Kenny said we’d have to build on what we could produce or develop and we have. Of course, we need strengthening for next year and we need some experience (anyone knocking the efforts of Evans, Burgess, Rose or Pitman?) but pick up the odd one or two. Find a few gems not getting games at Premier League teams and we’ll be on our way.
If there have been disappointments this season it’s been the disappointment that most of the loan players have been. I’ve said elsewhere I’d only keep Walkes and O’Keefe and, possibly Ronan although how he fits with Jackett’s statement that we need to have good, strong athletes to compete in this league I don’t know. Has he really been that much better than Adam May was when he was in the team?
What do we need next season? Luck with injuries, goals from more players, plus one or two unearthed gems in the transfer market. As we were told, we weren’t going to buy our way out of the league. Let’s carry on giving them same support the team and manager deserve and build on this year.
Are we disappointed we haven’t made the playoffs? Of course, we are. But does anyone believe that a team that has lost more than a third of games played really deserves to go up? That has been this season. Let’s look forward to next and hope we pick up another Matt Clarke (and keep him) especially if the next one is a centre-forward!
Play Up Pompey (as always!!)
The views within this article are the views of the individual who wrote and submitted this piece; they are not necessarily shared by the Vital Pompey Journalists.
PLAY UP POMPEY
