Chapter 1: What are the challenges faced by Pompey in their upcoming Championship match?
As Pompey ease themselves back into the routine of preparation for a looming Championship match, players and staff are sharply conscious that the next game comes on a Friday, not a Saturday, a piece of scheduling which effectively robs them of 24 hours preparation, and even the preparations that took place on Saturday and Sunday were subject to an hour lost through clocks going forward overnight on Sunday.
Some would say small matters, but when small matters pile up they become big matters. Besides with Pompey's next fixture taking place on Friday, after that, with just two full days preparation time, namely the weekend of Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 5th, it's on to the six-pointer against Oxford, which kicks off at half-past 12 in the afternoon.
The first job on the list as the players assemble after a mini-break to recharge their batteries, is a health and fitness check on the players, especially those who are nursing everything from niggles to full-blown ailments. Naturally Pompey'll be keeping news about those developments close to their chest, all eyes and ears are out for any snippets on Ebo Adams.
But coach John Massino is looking for good news on a number of his players.
Yeah, exactly. That's precisely the case. Thank you for that. News is news, even if it's obvious.
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Chapter 2: How does player fitness impact team preparation for games?
It still has to be reported. And those are the facts and just the facts and all of the facts that are available. We may not know until two o'clock on Friday afternoon. whether Ebo Adams has recovered from whatever it was that affected his knee at the very end of the QPR game. And, of course, we hope that he's fit. The fact that he might not play doesn't necessarily mean that he's not fit.
If you listen to Steve Bone's excellent podcast, at the end he is predicting his team for Norwich and he's predicting a second XI, effectively. And the reason for that, he says, is because he wants to save all the fitness and guts that are in his first team for the much more important Oxford game. And there's a good deal of intelligent thinking there.
I just wonder whether John Massino is prepared to go out on a limb again, having gone out on a bit of a limb, swapping Swift and Adams against QPR and sticking with it through the game.
Chapter 3: What are the implications of TV pundits' predictions for Portsmouth's future?
whether he's prepared to go out on a similar limb against Norwich. What we do know for sure is that we're hanging on the fitness reports about Ibai Adams, and we at Pompey Sound wonder whether that's a wise thing. We have got more than 20 other footballers who are...
Well, most of them are rock-solid championship performers, and when they gel, then we can go to places like Millwall and Charlton and get a damn good performance and a damn good result. So it doesn't all hang on Iboe Adams.
It would be wrong of us to even begin to think that, especially if that thinking affects the players, because if it turns out that he does have an injury which is going to sideline him, for Norwich, for Oxford, possibly until the rest of the season, then we are going to have to get on with what we've got.
And we have to remember that what we've got is good enough to go and stuff people like, as I said, Charlton and Millwall at their gaff. And therefore, when they stitch it together, they're good enough.
As the sharp end of the season heaves into view, Pompey find they face an increasing number of pressure points, one of which is the sudden appearance of TV pundits who are U-turning on the club's prospects.
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Chapter 4: How do pundits influence public perception of a football team?
Pompey Sounds says, It's not the pundits' fault they have to make predictions, or that they are frequently mistaken. It's that they are always predictable, they predict the obvious, and they hunt in packs.
Following Pompey's result at QPR, rather than analyse the breach between the game and the result, a whole slew of former players who aren't up to management and probably envy John Massigno, have gathered together to write Pompey off.
Tommy Smith, himself a former Yeoman Championship defender, is now saying on Sky, I'll be honest with you, that one against QPR was a real bad one, a real damaging one. You're in that situation you're in, and you need that Solom fight in a relegation scrap. When I saw QPR thumped 4-0 by Burrow a few weeks ago they looked like they were in mid-table and on the beach.
So to beat Portsmouth 6-1 from a Portsmouth point of view is a really really bad one in a relegation fight. I'm a little bit concerned for Portsmouth I'll be totally honest with you. I think Portsmouth and Oxford are the teams who will go down. I just think the other teams have those moments and bits of quality I don't see Portsmouth and Oxford having that.
Chapter 5: What are the key factors in ensuring financial sustainability for football clubs?
So I think they will be the two who go down. Andy Hinchcliffe also on Sky yesterday. I look at those last four games and Leicester have Portsmouth to play. If Portsmouth win that one, and it's a big if, they have Hull, Millwall and Blackburn, on the final day. If Leicester are to go down, it could be Portsmouth who save themselves, and it could be on goal difference.
It's that tight, but I'd probably go with Portsmouth, Oxford and Sheffield Wednesday. So the question after hearing that item is what do we think of TV football pundits? What do we think of their analysis of the game, before the game, the build-up, half-time, the stuff that they say after the game? That's one thing.
The other thing they're often asked to do is to comment on the future, to offer their opinion on who they think is going to win whatever tournament, whatever league, who they think is going to suffer, who they think is going to be relegated.
Chapter 6: How does the Independent Football Regulator aim to improve club finances?
And quite a lot of attention at the moment is being placed on the relegation battle at the foot of the championship. And that's where we are. And at the moment, because of the 6-1 defeat by QPR, and let's remember that that is officially now a freak result. that the stats say that it is a freak result.
It's never happened before that a side should have just six touches inside the opposition box and score six goals. Never happened before. Nowhere near it. So it's a freak result. And the performance just wasn't that bad. It wasn't a 6-1 defeat.
Chapter 7: What role does ownership play in a football club's sustainability?
But the pundits, they seize on that and they decide to hop onto the bandwagon of, to be honest, they always say, to be honest, don't they? To be honest, and then they say the bleeding obvious. I didn't say bleeding. I said blooming. They state the blooming obvious, which is that Portsmouth have something like a 50-50 chance of staying up. That's about it. All right. But because that those odds.
have got sharper as a result of Pompey being on a bit of a bad run, then they are hedging their bets and they are going with what they think the most likely outcome is. Not what they think is going to be the outcome, but what looks like the likely outcome.
Chapter 8: Why is fan satisfaction crucial for the success of a football club?
Because part of it is they don't want the correspondence. They don't want the social media. They don't want people criticising them, supporters of clubs that they support. have predicted will go down.
If those clubs don't go down, they don't want the maelstrom of bad press that they're going to get from fans and basically, you know, members of the public criticizing them, possibly quite ferociously, for ever doubting their heroes. So those things, they are all the pieces of nutrition that a pundit needs to take into account, needs to digest.
in order to come up with what is often a tentative prediction, a prediction which is simply more likely than not, but they enshroud it and they enshrine it by saying, to be honest. So personally, I and we at Pompey Sound completely discount those predictions that we're going down.
Pompey CEO Andy Cullen is talking about Pompey's future. He's confident the club's future is safe under the Eisners, and welcomes the arrival of an independent football regulator, whose role is to rein in some of the dangerous excesses of many clubs, particularly in the Championship.
Cullen is all for clubs being able to sustain themselves within their own budget, budgets funded by real income, namely gate receipts, broadcasting fees and merchandise. He's fearful for clubs whose owners promise huge loans to spend on transfers and inflated wages before folding and taking the club down with them. He says, It depends on your definition of sustainability.
Sustainability can mean different things to many people. For some people it will mean break-even. And clearly that's not going to happen anytime soon in the championship. With the new licensing regime from the Independent Football Regulator, there will be a licensing regime which will be introduced later this autumn. What the IFR is looking at is your financial model going forward.
Have you got enough liquidity in your football club to meet the commitment you're making in certain areas, particularly on players? Where is the cash coming from? Can you suffer a shock, which could be obviously relegation in terms of impact? Are your contracts in such a way that you can continue to fund? Another is if the owner loses interest.
We have seen that at clubs where an owner does have a go and sometimes hasn't achieved the objective they have set out and get themselves into trouble. Then that owner doesn't have the appetite to continue to fund those losses they have committed over a number of years. And the third could be the owner funding being cut off.
Again, we have seen that at some clubs recently where the owners haven't traditionally been able to finance a football club. We are sustainable because we have owners that are putting sufficient funds into the football club and increasing funds into the football club to enable it to move forward in a way which doesn't put the football club at risk. Those are two measures for sustainability.
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