It's going to be a huge step up in class. We've already been pretty ruthless with our retained list which suggests there is a recruitment plan to upgrade. Kamara will be a huge loss, and we're all hoping that Norwich somehow win the playoff's which would allow us to loan him again next season. Richard Hughes has pulled rabbits out the hat for relative peanuts to provide Mousinho with the tools to get promoted, so we have to hope he can do likewise this year and allow us to stabilise. The reality is that it will be a battle, and i'm sure we'll have one of the lower budgets in the division. I'd take 4th from bottom now. Good to be back though.
I'm guessing Kamara grew up in Norfolk . With Leeds almost certainly bottling it it's gonna be tight/tough for Norwich . We're in same boat with Adams from Cardiff. You're a similar size club to us ( potential greatness 50k seater stadium with a sugar daddy lol ) and now we're in the Championship the loan opportunities from the Prem will be much much better. Hey why the rancid bitterness from Saints fans on here ? Itz coming across tin pot. Banter yes... but the relentless C word being used is embarrassing.
Are they f*ck they've barely got crowds over 20k for the last 100 years and regularly got average crowds under 10k even as recently as the 90's. Absolute myth telling c*nts.
I was there in November 1996 when I was just about to turn 13. Lost 1-0 in front of 7, 750 fans. Portsmouth v Stoke City, 30 November 1996
He will always be well respected down here as someone who gave his best and was fully signed up to getting us out of league one. Had a lot of negativity from PNE fans when we signed him. Turned out to be a much better player than I was expecting based on the reaction at the time, but it was a lower level so his weaknesses probably weren't as tested. Telling that we've not renewed his contract, so league one probably his level. Looks like Wigan interested which would be a good fit for him and take him closer to home. He'll always be welcomed back down here in future.
Mid 90's we had some shockers. I think we had less than 6k on one Tuesday night game and from memory thought that was Stoke. Think we averaged less than 10k for a couple of seasons. We were bobbing about at the bottom of div 2 every year in a decaying ground with seats bolted on to open terracing on all four sides. Usual ownership problems, this time Martin Gregory who had inherited the club from his father and had no interest in football other than trying to sell players to put the money into his ailing car showroom business. John Gregory, Terry Fenwick, Terry Venables. Jesus, those days were bleak on the whole. It took the return of Alan Ball to start any real enthusiasm back in the club.
Yeah I remember as a kid I saw Portsmouth as one of the smaller teams in the division. Usually perennial strugglers, low crowds, small away followings to Stoke etc. You don't have any concept of history when you're a kid and you just take things as they are and you appeared to have a small support and always struggled. The main thing that stood out with you was the guy with the bell . The only reason I went to that game was I used to go to whatever away game was nearest to my birthday when I was a kid and that year Portsmouth was the nearest game to the 4th December. Previous year was Norwich, often got long distance ones . The away end was shocking, faded seats bolted onto old terracing so a shit incline and no leg room. And to top it off, no roof and flooded toilets ankle deep in piss. Fortunately it didn't rain that day. Isn't the away end still fundamentally the same stand and seats, just it's now got a roof over it? In that era throughout the 80s and much of the 90s crowds used to fluctuate wildly with some decent sized clubs recording some really low crowds at certain times. Football was struggling generally and although crowds started to pick up in the 90s it was a gradual process and some clubs were slower to recover than others with Portsmouth being one of them. You were a bit of a neglected outpost who had been shit for a very long time. I know Stoke had some crap crowds at times. I can remember a small number of sub 10,000 Saturday crowds against the likes of Oldham and Tranmere in the mid 90s when we were struggling. We never reached the nadir of averaging below 10,000 in my time anyway, our averages in the mid 90s were generally around 12,000 odd. Still crap, but top half by the standards of the time. It was a different time. There was the general football malaise after all the problems in the 80s that kept the middle classes away and damaged football's reputation. And the way matches were ticketed was very different. Nowadays season tickets are heavily promoted with significant discounts compared with paying match by match so the majority of home fans are now season ticket holders. Which keeps crowds much more consistent throughout the season and less fickle because most people have paid up in advance and don't want to waste their money by not turning up. In the 90s and beyond, there was only a small discount for buying a season ticket so most fans paid on the day cash on the turnstiles. So fans were more picky and fickle with the opposition and form. I remember with Stoke we could have 20,000 odd one week for a local derby with Port Vale. But if we lost, or the season in general was poor, we could drop down to like 10,000 odd for the next home game if it was someone unfashionable like Grimsby. Heavily discounted season tickets, and all seater stadiums that further encourage buying season tickets because people don't want to lose their seat next to the people they know, are big drivers behind the massively improved crowds these days throughout the Football League.
He was liked at Rochdale too. Big jump in level for fullbacks, if you're slow then you need to be a very good footballer and physical. Rafferty wasn't.
I think this is an attempt at being assertive. It's clearly a work in progress but for making an effort to find a positive and showing enthusiasm I'll give it a 7/10.
Still amazes me to this day how many people do not realise how much the people of these two cities hate each other. Trust me, the things said on this board pale in comparison to the shit said in real life from both sets of fans, but I'd honestly say that most of the hatred comes from the blue side.
Anyone who gets offended by this stuff, can't have a proper derby involving their club. I fully encourage the hatred.
