And alternative title for Dan Brett’s latest offering was ‘There’s more to a season than promotion,’ either way read on for more.
For many Pompey fans’, the idea of heavy investment within the squad over the summer isn’t just an ideal, but a necessity. For the most part of this season, we’ve had to make up the numbers on the bench with either youngsters, injured players or those seemingly disinterested with life at the club – Nadir Ciftci, I’m looking at you.
Whether we’re able to get the right takeover to allow Steve Cotterill (or another manger, perhaps?) to do this is another thing, but there are many reasons why I feel that we need to improve the playing side before next season.
Many of you at home may have already started thinking what reason this may be. To get a better chance of going back up? Not for me. To play prettier football? That’d be nice, but no. I want to see better investment in the squad because in just four months, three other South-Coast based sides could be joining us in the Npower Championship – and I don’t want us sitting bottom of that pile.
Out of the three sides coming up, I think a fair assessment is that they will all give us a run for our money – none more so than Brighton and Hove Albion. The Seagulls played host to us last season, in a 3-1 match which saw our side outplayed and outwitted, a token goal from Tom Kilbey slightly making the scoreline less embarrassing.
They have a host of players capable of tearing apart any Championship line up, including the likes of Elliott Bennett, Adam El-Abd and Matt Sparrow, all of which had been touted with moves away from the club during the last transfer window.
Bournemouth still have a good chance of going up also, however a good start was scuppered by a poor run, leaving the Cherries with aspirations solely of reaching the play off final at Wembley, looking to return to the second tier of English football for the first time since 1987 – when led by former Pompey manager Harry Redknapp.
Danny Hollands, Danny Ings and goalkeeper Shwan Jalal have all been key players for Bournemouth this term, and will be looking to finish the season in style as the side look to maintain their season ambitions in going up to play the likes of Portsmouth, Millwall and Doncaster.
Steve Fletcher has also played an important role for Bournemouth, if only in the last game, with the veteran rolling back the years to score the winner, giving his side a better footing at claiming one of the valuable play off places.
And then of course, there’s those down the road. They’ve been impressive all year – we can grant them that, and they have a good bunch of players, but I’d be interested to see how many of those will stick around next term. Youngster Alex Chamberlain has been linked with several moves away from the club, with Adam Lallana, Kelvin Davis and José Fonte also star performers this season – which will no doubt attract interest from ‘bigger clubs’.
So there you have it. Yeah, I would love to go play the ‘big boys’ of English football again, and if we did get there, I would much prefer to do it the ‘right way’, but for now, I would take much more delight in affirming our place as the biggest and best club on the South Coast, something we already know – but could do with firming up once again.
Until next time.
Dan Brett
Twitter – DanBrett90
Written by Dan Brett.
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.
