Chapter 1: What are the latest updates on Pompey's recruitment strategy?
The latest Pompey news, updates every day, from the Pompey Sound Newsdesk.
John Messina is emphasising the need for Pompey's recruitment strategy to fit the bill right across the pitch, saying, There has to be that balance you have to strike.
You have to strike a balance between waiting too long and that player not being available, then missing what the second or third choice might have been. We have to make sure you get the balance right, we could have signed 15 players by now, we could have had everything done and dusted, but we want to wait for the right ones.
By the same token, we don't want to get to the end of the window and miss out on any of the ones we could have taken who may have affected things, but aren't at the top of the list. We're not sitting there waiting for the sake of waiting, though. If we can do deals, we'll do them. But I still look across the championship and don't see a huge amount of activity.
And of course, as usual, everybody is playing the same waiting game, trying to get the balance right. And what never really gets talked about is the fact that there are complex negotiations taking place at every club. involving hundreds of players. In Pompey's case, perhaps not just the six that we know we want to bring in, down to four now that we've brought two in, but not just those four.
As John Massino indicated, there will be players who they will turn to if their number one selection, their preference, goes elsewhere. A deal can't be done.
And so that list will probably be, in Pompey's case, and I'm just taking a shot here, there could be a dozen or more, 20 or 30 players whose people, agents, are being spoken to and they're trying to draw together a list of priorities for the various parts of the pitch where they want to have some new faces, or to be more precise, some new legs.
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Chapter 2: How does Pompey balance recruitment with player availability?
And it is a matter of striking a balance because you do want to get the best player you possibly can, your preference, in. But if that falls through, other clubs do have deeper pockets. There can be other means, matters that are taken into consideration when a player has to decide between club A, B and C, the geography of the thing. He might want to stay in the location that he is on.
already act because they've got a young family and the kids are settled at school all of these things come into the it come into consideration and then of course there is the status of the club it hasn't been said but i often wondered whether yang was happy for tottenham
to recall him because they said um there's a possibility that you'll be going to a more a club whose position in the league at the moment is far uh more status ridden than than that of pompey and they're they're red hot favorites to be playing in the premier league next season uh so that's the standard that they're at and that is the status that they have so all of those things go into the mix
with the players and their agents and their families to decide which club they go to. And Pompey will be on the possible list for about, as mentioned, a dozen, 20, 30 perhaps, players.
And all of those negotiations are lengthy and complex, whether they're taking place live on the phone or by Zoom, or more likely by a series of either email exchanges or even telephone message exchanges, we'll never know.
But we have to trust that Pompey get it right, which they more or less have done every time it's been Hughes and Massino, and that by the 1st of February, I think it is, or it might be the 2nd of February, We've got ourselves a full, rich squad of players who have youth and players who have experience. That's one of the big balances that he's talking about.
Tom Chappell, described as a fan writer, has been granted a page on the BBC website to pontificate.
there was only ever going to be one acceptable outcome from Saturday afternoon. Win at all costs.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do clubs face during player negotiations?
Thankfully, that's exactly what we got. The 161-day wait for an away win since Oxford on the opening day wore heavy on the pre-match faces of all 1,500 Pompey fans who'd travelled to Hillsborough. You could really feel that the pressure was on, and other than freshly faced Milenic Alli there was very little to talk about at the half-time interval.
It was an incredibly low-quality opening 45, and, quite frankly, a pretty poor excuse for a game of football between two struggling sides. After the break, Pompey were much better but could have hardly been worse. Eboo Adams' introduction was incredibly welcome to the travelling faithful. For me Pompey looked a noticeably better outfit once he was on the pitch.
The goal itself was actually quite the spectacle. Connor Shaughnessy's self-bestowed licence to progress forward followed by a wicked Ali Cross, met by the arriving Adrian Segecic behind Colby Bishop.
Charlton's last-minute mayhem aside, I can hardly think of a game this season in which I've wanted us to score more than at Hillsborough on Saturday, nor can I think of a goal that we've celebrated more. There was a genuine feeling that if Pompey were to lose this game that would probably be us down.
With that in mind, it's a seismic victory, which once again drags us a notch outside the relegation zone. What is perhaps most imperative, is we cannot now go another 161 days for a victory on our travels. Pompey's away form must improve as of now and Saturday has got to be the catalyst. Performance-wise we will have to be so much better and there is still such a sizeable road ahead.
Six more wins and Pompey will live to fight another season of championship football.
Yes, young Tom Chappell got it more or less right, didn't he? You can't quibble with most of the things he said in that piece for the BBC.
On the other hand, he's only really repeating what we already knew ourselves before any of the experts and commentators and reporters and journalists climbed aboard the business of analysing the Sheffield Wednesday game and indeed where Pompey are at the moment. But there's nothing wrong with saying something that's already been said
because the reason it's already been said is because it's right. There was, however, one little revelation that I found fascinating in Tom Chappell's piece there, which was that he said that Conor Shaughnessy went forward of his own volition. He took it on himself. He almost implies that he had a rush of blood and it worked out really well.
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Chapter 4: How did Pompey's recent match impact the team's morale?
because he knows that people will cover for him and no doubt paul was covering for shocknessy when he turned into a provider as well as a destroyer but nice piece tom well done uh mick robertson does it like this and i think if you listen you can tell that he has got just that little bit more experience when it comes to communication
Pompey Sound's keynote contributor Mick Robertson, three BAFTAs, two Emmys and a Peabody, takes his weekly opinion piece to another level as he coruscates the wavering weak need among Pompey fans.
Only players valued at three million plus can save us. John Massigno'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, Schottmasey, 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
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Chapter 5: What were the standout performances in the latest game?
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, I don't know.
They announced anyway, and I quote, Portsmouth Football Club has endured significant hardship in recent years and supporters have remained loyal throughout. This referred to Eisner's time, this hardship. Is that sound as the hardship of a refurbished Fratton Park? Is it the introduction of a professional Pompey women's team? Is that the hardship?
Is it the hardship of a new fan zone or the hardship of a return to spending millions in fees on recruitment, which we've been doing In the last couple of years? The hardship of sold out crowds of 20,000? Or is it the hardship of promotion to the championship? Hardship?
Chapter 6: What common issues are affecting Pompey's season performance?
There are many times in my history of following Pompey when we could have done with hardship like that.