Friday 13 February 2009

Portsmouth preview

After the cancellation of the original fixture I wrote that it was good news for us: we'd be in a much stronger position now than we would have been then. We have Robinho, Ireland, Given, Bellamy and de Jong all available on top of those who would have played on 10 January. Portsmouth have some players back from injury but we're still in a much stronger position for this than we were one month ago.

Another big change is that Portsmouth are now managerless. Danny rightly flagged up the possibility of our getting hit by 'new manager syndrome' in the week. Fortunately we've missed it - Eriksson hasn't been sacked by Mexico yet - but we could still run into 'no manager syndrome': remember the Nottingham Forest game six weeks ago?

Nevertheless we should still get something. With no away league wins since August though I can't get too confident. Robinho is really due a big game, and if him and Elano do what they did on Wednesday night we'll be fine. But I'm still not sufficiently confident to go for a 2-0 win. I'm sticking with a score draw.

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