Duncan Barkes

for Preston, who put Preston in the lead against Oxford.

So these are clubs that will welcome any positive publicity, any positive news.

And in order to decide which of the players representing those clubs go on the team sheet for Team of the Week, you pick the goalscorer.

which makes Devlin's achievement even greater because that honour could have gone to Lang and it could have, it could just as easily have gone to Bowat.

But that's how these things seem to be put together to me.

And however, it doesn't kindle an enormous amount of interest in me.

I don't know about yourself, but a little bit of background goes a long way.

I don't know about you, but I always feel a little bit nervous about going overboard about an up-and-coming youngster, especially before he's really cut his teeth and shown what he could do.

They reckon that Wayne Rooney was ready for Premier League football at the age of 14.

And when he suddenly arrived, aged 16, there was absolutely no doubt about it.

And I think he held down a starting place in the Everton line-up until Manchester United came for him right from the moment after he scored that famous goal from outside the box.

Singer of course is not going to scale the heights that Wayne Rooney scaled but he is a genuine prospect and what the management team at Pompey have to do and they seem to be doing it well is keeping him grounded keeping his feet on the ground.

Reminding him that there's a good deal of work to be done, but at the same time, shoring up, supporting, maintaining, developing the right level of confidence that a young player needs in alliance with a good footballing ability and a good footballing brain.

And then you've got yourself a serious prospect.

So you praise.

but not too much.

And you also offer constructive criticism, but again, not too much.

It's an art form bringing on talented youngsters, and it's beginning to look, isn't it, as though Pompey have got that art form cracked, or at least are well on the way to cracking it down at the Academy.

Yes, it's very nice for Josh Murphy to hear that somebody with an element of kudos in what he says, says that he is, did he say the best player in the world at crossing the ball?

There's a website somewhere out there that has measured that.