Sol, Transfers and Jimmy Dickinson.

This is from the Times- about Sol's call up to the England squad
This is from the Mail- about Sol's call up to the England squad.
The story about us being interested in a lower league player is listed in the feeds over on the right. But I'm posting this version from the Echo (so named because if you want people in that city to understand something you have to say it twice). The comments at the bottom of the article are kind of funnyish.
This is not a bulletin board- but here's a bulletin board type of post about the Xmas fixtures.
Things have not been going too well for Begovic down at Bournemouth.
You can win 4 tickets for Pompey-Blackburn here.
Should have posted this yesterday. A BBC journo on Sol's return.
Here's a blog by an American whose happy to take the moral high ground in response to Harry's comments about the XBox culture. ( You can find a link to Harry's article in yesterday's blog.)
I think I'm right that Jimmy Dickinson was the last Pompey player to start a competitive match for England. I love this picture -it could almost be the cover of a Smiths single.





Bit shameless this- but click on this picture and you'll go to another blog of mine - showing video clips of the 5 players I wish I'd seen play live (including Jimmy Dickinson)

ScottishFitba - is angry (correctly in my opinion) about the cost of tickets for the Carling Cup game against Blackburn
Hughes is facing a ban- he never seemed a violent player to me.
This is from the News- about James not getting a start against Estonia. (All the latest stories from the News are listed in the right hand column- but this one does not seem to be there). Even a mate of mine- who is a Spurs fan - and who refuses to accept that we might be better than Spurs this season, agrees that Robinson is terrible at the moment and that James should play.
Should have posted this earlier- It's David James' Guardian blog and it's great.
Here's David Lacey- the Guardian Columnist talking about the Reading game. (Sorry it's a bit old). Lacey always struck me as a bit of a dour writer- I remember him once chastising Beckham for not doing much in a game that England won 2-0. He was right in that, other than scoring one goal and setting up the other, Beckham did have a quiet game. He's fairly typical of the Guardian - a paper that has honed it's critical instincts to the point where they often miss the point. (ok - mini-essay over)
This is Clan Pompey's hompage



Click on the picture to go to one of my other blogs and see a video of why Harry is the best English manager there is.

Lauren, African Player, Fulham and more.

No update for a while because I've been a bit busy-
I try to avoid printing links to the stories that you see everywhere else in this blog but I guess some will slip through. What I have done is put 3 RSS feeds onto the page (one from the News) which constantly update the main Pompey news. You can find them in the right hand column.

Here's a transfer rumour about Lauren that I've not seen anywhere else.
You can find this story by Harry everywhere- but this is the original article in the Sun.
This is three days old, from the Mail, and is about Pompey's African players.
This is a review of Sunday's match by the bloke who writes for the Scottish Fitba website. I like his stuff.
This is a post from a Sunderland chatroom- about what they think about Harry. I only included it because between all the usual cliches about him being a used car sales man/spiv/etc. someone says he's got a face like a melted welly. Which made me laugh.
This is a few days old-and I may have posted it before but it's a NOTW columnist full of praise for Harry. I agree entirely with what he says- though I did not know that Harry changed his name. I wonder why?
This is a really nice blog by a Fulham fan. Got his view on Sunday's game.
...and this is what I thought- about the same game at one of my many other blogs.

As most people know- Chuck Culpepper's book "Up Pompey" has made the long list for the William Hill Sports book of the year. I would want it to win but Mark Collings who wrote "A Very British Coop (about pigeon racing!) is a good mate of mine and he mentions me in the dedication. So that's where my loyalties are.

Fulham Pompey Reports

Match Reports (and seeing as I was at the game I am going to mark the report out of ten)
The Times- 3/10 - Poor report. I didn't like the way he dismisses Benjy's goal as being a result of a defensive error followed by a deflection. I saw it as being a result of a incisive pass from Davis with Benjy using his pace and strength to move away from the Fulham defender - which was then followed by a slight deflection.
The Sun. 6/10. Better than the Times if only because he mentions the work Fulham did in the first half which led to James have to make a few decent saves. I did think that the ratings given to our defenders were too low.
The Mirror. 8/10. Good report. He's right about how good James was - my only slight criticism is that he should have also made more of just how good our defence were-(and also how Fulham did make them work- especially in the first half)
The Mail. 6/10. Decent enough report-with a nice photo of Benjy.
The Guardian. 1/10. Not really a match report- more an article about Lawrie Sanchez which mentions in passing a few things that happened in the game. (Not like the Guardian to totally miss the point )
The Telegraph. 4/10. Disappointed with this as the Telegraph's reports are usually best-but a bit like the Guardian they have decided to use the report to reflect on Sanchez's future. Did show a nice turn of phrase though- I particularly liked "filleted by a resurgent Portsmouth".
The Independent. 5/10. Pretty average really

Fulham previews, Pericard, The Who and Manu Chao.

I have not included much from VitalFootball for a while - here they round up some rumours from the last couple of days.
Odd blog this by a Fulham fan- who reckons that Diop is going to score and then shows a Youtube video of The Who doing "Baba O'Riley". Not sure why - but I enjoyed it anyway.
Another Blog- by a bloke who seems to quite like himself -giving a preview of Sunday's match. I'd like his blog more if he included random videos of rock gods.
Here's a preview of Sunday's game- which got me all excited because I'm going.
This is from the News- by the man who still styles himself on DeBarge. He always cheers me up when I see him on the telly.
Here's a rumour from yesterday's Mail- which then turns into a piece about Linvoy's beliefs.
This man is worrying about whether we should expanding Fratton Park. He makes some good points- but seeing as we are struggling to sell out at the moment I'm not sure there is any need to expand.
I missed this story about Pompey old boy Vincent Pericard-now at Stoke - from Juventus to a jail in Exeter is a pretty grim journey (as is Juventus to Stoke I suppose)

This has nothing to do with Pompey but in the spirit of the Fulham fan who posted the Who video -I'm going to post this video of Manu Chao- because I'm going to see him tonight at Brixton:

Courtney Pitt, Gregory worse than Rix, More Reading

This is a couple of days old it's the Times' match report on the Reading game - but I quite like it- just for Coppell's comments about second season syndrome.
The Daily Star manages to string about 5 sentences together. I've only included it because there may be a disguised dig at Nugent in what Harry says. (maybe)
Here's a rumour about Tony A which I'm sure has been posted elsewhere - but I hadn't seen it.
Here's a short blog about whether Rix was worse than Gregory when he was in charge. One of the most depressing game of football I think I ever saw was Palace v. Pompey on a cold March evening in 2002 at Selhurst Park. (Here's a report from a Palace point of view). It was right at the end of Rix's tenure and at the time I just thought we were a club going nowhere. Playing for us that night was Courtney Pitt who now plays for Cambridge Utd.- my local team who I sometimes watch. I think he's found his level in the Conference (..you really shouldn't re-brand crap) - but watching him play now and thinking about that Palace game and it's hard to think of another club, other than Pompey, that has come so far so quickly. (Reading maybe- but we've just stuffed them).
This is out of date -but I'm sure if you want Harry to give you an after dinner speech these are the people that'll sort you out.
This is also a couple of days old- it's the Mirror's view of Saturday's game- I think he has a little dig at MOTD which I liked.

Sol, Kanu, Radio Stations and more Reading

This is the best photo I've found from Saturday's game

Sol thinks we are going to do better than we did last season- from the Mirror.
This is Harry on Kanu's contract.
Here's a blog by a Pompey fan- I really like the photo at the top. He's giving his take on the Reading match.
And this blog is a Reading fan's view of the game. (He was doing some gardening at the time)
This transfer rumour is from yesterday - Jarosik is claiming we are interested in him.
I've written this before but I get most of these stories from Google alerts- and one thing I noticed yesterday is that the Pompey Reading match was being written about in local papers and on local sites that have not much to do with either club. Most of them were not particularly interesting but this Welsh one had some fairly interesting stats (maybe?)
Here's Reading's Stephen Hunt on the game- brilliantly he says he can't remember much.
I'm not sure that this is new news about Pompey buying into all the local radio stations but it was released yesterday. We are taking over the world.

I like this picture as well- click on it and you can read the News of the World's match report- which I didn't include on Sunday-but wish I had because it uses the word bamboozled which is a great word anyway-but sounds really great if it is said by a French women, (as does higgledy piggledy- go and a find a French women and test it out)