Mick

of stoicism, you know the sort of thing, we're in a mess.

Such is life.

I'll mutter darkly into my breakfast bowl of cornflakes.

Only players valued at three million plus can save us.

John Masseno's so depressed he's about to resign.

rich shoes has become a failure and must be sacked and then there's the oh all pervasive one all yanks out sounders i can't claim i'm a bundle of joy just at the moment but as always there's a middle road through all of this our problem started in the summer

when one or two of our acquisitions didn't hit the ground running.

I'm thinking of Swifty and Chaplin, while others, like Leroux and Koznoski, who came, of course, from abroad, found adjusting to the Championship challenging.

These things happen.

Then, with the season underway, we got injuries.

I know all clubs get injuries, but I would argue more than our fair share, and in particular to key players, Schmidt, Ogilvie, Schottnesey, Pack, Murphy and Bishop, players at the core of our squad, the backbone, you could say.

And it really has been an uphill journey ever since, to the point that

we arrived at a truly wonderful fixture and draw with the Arsenal, which is a dream really, which should have provided excitement and anticipation and the hope of being a David against Goliath, dreams of headlines, all those traditional emotions of the FA Cup and instead soundless.

we got the dead hand of the so-called Pompey Alliance.

This anonymous little group seized the opportunity to make the most of our poor form, rode in on the back of a high-profile game to rally the more worried and susceptible of us.

And the Yanks Out folks

and those who love sackings.

A bit of a purge, spilling a bit of blood in the hope that it will rid us of our poison.

It was popular, that, I gather, in medieval days.

So before the Arsenal game, the so-called alliance of three, ten, thirty-seven and a half,