bender

skates level

although under the cosh a bit, I feel more confident than I did on Saturday.

Wham's woes at home come from dominating matches, failing to score and then the crowd get on top of them. Just whats happening now.

posh in front yey

Anyone else worried this will be the opposite to Millwall & leeds games and we wont win despite easily deserving to.

Would love that considering my location. Be nice to go to a tense game at Wembley without being emotionally attached to it.

I'm not sure we'll be one of the teams going straight back down. We've got enough class and financial backing. You have to look at Stoke, WBA, Swansea, Norwich etc etc. Our team will be stregthened and we will be playing better football albeit against better football teams, but that makes for better entertainment. You'll be seeing players at SMS that you regularly see on the tellybox. In the past weve beaten the big sides at home on regular occasions. If we go up, we'll be there for the long haul and the experience on match days will be far better. The best bit of course will be at half time when the HT scores come over the loud speaker system "Crawley 3 Portsmouth 0"

No one would ever claim the Merson was inteligent and ever prided himself on being as accurate as he possibly could. But the man is hilarious. We werent complaining when he said we were as good as Barcelona when we beat Oldham 6 nil last season, or when he said we should be in the Champions league when we won at Ipswich I think earlier this season, although clearly we all know were not that good. I loved his honesty when Pompey were going through the myer the first time round (2010). "no one buys Portsmouth shirts in Liverpool so why the ek are they paying players 60 grand a week." "Its like a poker match but instead of throwing in your car keys you throw in Portsmouth FC" was another. Its an entertainment business. Commentators like Motty and Parry seem to be clued up with all the facts but just bore me, unlike Tyler who gets hillariously excited at times.

If he is an example of Wham fans then Saints have a clear advantage over them. Their fans just add to the pressure on the players. He's putting in the daggers before theyve even lost today.

and dont forget last season there were 3 teams (posh, Huds & us) going for one promotion spot. Brighton already had the top spot sewn up. This season there are 3 going for two.

I went to the Brighton game fully expecting to rip off seats but the chap next to me had kindly bought a comprehensively assembled toolkit. Mines in the loft.

Here are all 3's fixtures. Is anyone else a little narked that weve only got 2 days rest between our 2 easter games.

They dont have any games in hand. All 3 of us have 6 away games left. Wham have 5 home games and Reading & us have 4.

Last nights result was not just about Reading dropping 2 points. They've been playing on confidence for this run. See how they become average again.

1 -1 full time

dah thought that was a pen for donny

Personally I believe Reading will start to falter after they have one game where they fail to win - bit like Brum did a few weeks ago after they had 5/6 wins on the bounce, and a bit like Reading did last season. Could be a promotion party at Boro.

I think the Pompey bubble well and truly burst about 3 years ago.

I'm feeling really positive. Checkout what happened with Reading last season. Big winning streak then failed at the end. Both Saints and Wham have been up and down all season (mainly up obviously) but Reading's form is compressed into the last 7 games. One defeat for them and it will effect their confidence. Also look at Birmingham. They had that big run then what happened. If we get our heads down and perform, it could be Reading & Wham fighting it out for 2nd.

This will pick you up 1 Southampton 36 32 69 2 West Ham 35 21 66 3 Reading 35 18 66 4 Middlesbrough 34 8 59 5 Brighton 36 8 58 6 Cardiff 35 10 57 7 Birmingham 34 21 56 8 Blackpool 36 10 56 9 Hull 34 6 54 10 Leeds United 35 3 50 11 Crystal Palace 35 4 49 12 Leicester 35 5 48 13 Burnley 35 4 48 14 Watford 36 -12 47 15 Derby 35 -9 46 16 Ipswich 35 -7 45 17 Barnsley 36 -11 43 18 Peterborough 35 -3 41 19 Millwall 36 -11 37 20 Nottm Forest 35 -21 35 21 Bristol City 36 -27 34 22 Coventry 36 -19 30 23 Doncaster 34 -24 30 24 Portsmouth 35 -6 26

Going back to the original question, how long is Fox out for ??

what a load of tosh. The fact is he doesnt play for Wham, he plays for us. If we had Messi we would be up by now. So what? For me theres 3 teams in the running. However Saints and Wham have been up and down all season but mainly up. Reading have been pretty mid table but have suddenly put together 6 wins, rather like Brum did a few weeks ago. They are running on confidence. They could soon fall over after one bad result. Cant believe ill be actually cheering on Nugent this week.

Theyve scored 9 and the other team 1 over 2 games. This would definately soften the blow after last night. Just need Reading to start to falter.

I still think were better than Reading. At times in the first half we were excellent but just tired due to our extersions on Saturday. Their game in hand is a tricky away one and were 3 pts ahead of them.

Both us and Reading have 2 home games next week, except their 2nd one is quite tricky. After that they have 3 straight away games whilst we have 2 away then 1 home. Then it leads us into their last 4 away games which as we know are BHA, us, Wham and Brum. Im not sure theyre as good as us either.