{"id":12629,"date":"2026-01-10T16:47:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T16:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=12629"},"modified":"2026-01-11T18:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T18:53:07","slug":"up-for-the-cup-down-on-the-south-coast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=12629","title":{"rendered":"Up for the Cup Down on the South Coast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<a id=\"-JkejgejRFBCIDmJqwzvJQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1083720490\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" rel=\"noopener\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'-JkejgejRFBCIDmJqwzvJQ',sig:'1bR4PqprWpnC5w9_paqUd7XAo7AgzHaT0nQ7iZxJmYU=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1083720490',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" async=\"\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p>And so to historic Fratton Park with its mock Tudor half-timbered entrance for the 3rd Round of the FA Cup. Portsmouth v Arsenal has the ring of titanic clashes of long ago, when shorts were baggy, wingers bow-legged and football still in black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet we were last at Fratton Park as recently as 2020 for a 5th Round FA Cup tie. We won 2-0 with goals from Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Eddie Nketiah, en route to winning the Cup behind closed doors due to Covid. Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli are the only two who played against Portsmouth still in our first-team squad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the most recent league game, you have to go back to December 2009, and the death throes of Portsmouth&#8217;s turbulent debut in the Premier League. That started in the 2003-04 season after &#8216;Arry Rednapp and Jim Smith had taken the club back to the top flight after 15 seasons away. Eighteen months later, Redknapp walked out after a row with his chairman, and to rub it in, went to arch-rivals Southampton.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To the surprise of all, he returned mid-way through the following season. With the owners flashing the cash, he secured two top-half finishes in the league and won the FA Cup with a team that included David James, Sol Campbell, Lassana Diarra, Niko Kranj\u010dar and Kanu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet only a few months after winning the FA cup, Redknapp left again, leaving his assistant, Tony Adams, as manager. Our former captain lasted barely three months. Subsequently, serious financial problems came to light. At the end of 2009, the taxman filed a winding-up petition against the club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Things then got bad. Portsmouth went into administration twice and were relegated three times in four seasons. In 2013, the Pompey Supporters Trust, a fan group, took over. The trust got the club out of administration, cleared its debt and won promotion from the fourth tier of English football to the third, making Portsmouth one of only five English football clubs to have been champions of all four tiers of English professional football.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At that point, the trust sold the club to its current owner, the US investment company of former Disney chairman Michael Eisner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>John Mousinho<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John Mousinho will take charge of Portsmouth for the 150th time on Sunday. The club is the 39-year-old&#8217;s first managerial job, which he took on in 2023 after retiring from what can only be described as a journeyman&#8217;s playing career. His clubs were Oxford United, Burton Albion, Preston North End, Stevenage, Gillingham, Wycombe Wanderers, Brentford, Yeading (yes, non-league Yeading; it is not a typo for Reading), Slough, Woking and Chesham. He also played for the University of Notre Dame in the United States. The record shows that every move he made between clubs was either a loan or a free transfer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his first season in charge, Portsmouth were League One champions. Last season, they finished 16th in the Championship. However, this season, they are sitting 21st, a point above the relegation zone, having won six of their 24 league games. Last time out, they got a 5-0 pasting at Bristol City on New Year&#8217;s Day. Mousinho departed from his customary 4-2-3-1 to play with a back three for that game. I doubt he will do that against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Few names in the Portsmouth squad are likely to be familiar to many &#8216;holics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nico Schmid, a 28-year-old Austrian who has been called up but not capped by his country, is the first-choice keeper.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mousinho will have Regan Poole, a throw-your-body-at-the-ball defender with one Wales cap, at centre back, but limited fit options for a partner. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Irishman Conor&nbsp;Shaughnessy, 29, who was first choice before getting injured in September and has Scottish Premiership experience with Hearts, might start, but has only had two games since returning to the team and has not managed 90 mins in either. Mousinho, for whom league survival will be a higher priority than the FA Cup, may prefer to save him for next Wednesday&#8217;s six-pointer against Sheffield Wednesday.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet 21-year-old Hayden Matthews, who has one cap for Australia and has recently been partnering&nbsp;Poole, turned his ankle against Bristol City and will be out for two months. Mousinho is already missing Josh Knight, one of his summer arrivals, from Hannover 96, who has a back stress fracture. Ibane Bowat, a London-born former Scotland U-21 international, who had a poor game against Bristol City as the third centre back, may retain a place by default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another youngster, 22-year-old Terry&nbsp;Devlin, has been playing right back. He is a seasoned international in comparison with four Northern Ireland caps. He is also Portsmouth&#8217;s joint leading goal scorer this season, with three. They are the second-lowest goal scorers in the Championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At left back, we should see Zak&nbsp;Swanson, formerly of this parish. We sold him to Pompey in 2022, after he had had 15 PL games on the bench for us, without getting a minute on the pitch. Now 25, he will be keen to show what we might have missed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Veteran club captain Marlon Pack, who began his career in Portsmouth&#8217;s youth system when the club was still in the Premier League before moving to Cheltenham, Bristol City, and Cardiff, will anchor the midfield alongside the ever-present 26-year-old Andre Dozzell, who was in England&#8217;s age group sides in his youth while at Ipswich.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Portsmouth&#8217;s big-money summer signing, at \u00a31.2 million, Hungarian U-21 international central midfielder M\u00e1rk&nbsp;Kosznovszky, has just torn his ACL and is done for the season, or more. That leaves Mousinho&#8217;s choice for playmaker between Conor Chaplin, who is on loan from Ipswich but, like his captain, started in Portsmouth&#8217;s youth teams, and experienced local lad John Swift, a summer arrival from West Brom, who played in the same England U-21 team as Rob Holding and Calum Chambers (Google them, younger &#8216;holics).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With Josh Murphy and Callum Lang&#8217;s hamstrings requiring another month of recovery, Frenchman Florian&nbsp;Bianchini gone in the fetlock and the neighbours having just recalled loanee South Korean starlet Min-hyeok&nbsp;Yang, Mousinho is short of wingers, who are crucial to his long-ball counterattacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adrian&nbsp;Segecic, who, like compatriot and similarly aged Matthews, was signed from Sydney FC, will likely start on the right flank. He doesn&#8217;t yet have an international cap, although he has been called up to the national squad. Harvey Blair, bought from Liverpool&#8217;s U-21s in the summer, will likely start on the other side.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Irishman Franco Umeh-Chibueze, who has 1 minute of senior football under his belt, is the only other fit winger available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Up front, 30-goal-a-season Brazilian international Colby&#8230; just joking, BtM\u2026 ex-Accrington striker Colby&nbsp;Bishop, who has scored once this season, had led the line until he rolled his ankle in December. He might only be able to play with a pain-killing injection, and Mousinho may prefer to be sure of having him for the Owls game. Makenzie Kirk, an Edinburgh-born Northern Ireland U-21 international, who has scored as many goals as Bishop despite playing only a quarter as many minutes, would deputise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No Riccardo Calafiori, Cristhian Mosquera or Max Dowman, and probably no Piero Hincapi\u00e9. I expect the light cavalry to start with the heavy artillery on the bench. That might include Kai Havertz. Jesus or Gy\u00f6keres as the nine will be the big call. Thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Arrizabalaga<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">White, Salmon, Gabriel, MLS<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Merino, Norgaard, Eze<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Madeuke, Gy\u00f6keres, Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yet, if Nwaneri doesn&#8217;t start this game, then when?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is an FA Cup tie. The form book goes out the window. Just ask Crystal Palace. Pompey&#8217;s fans and players will be up for it in compact and noisy Fratton Park. Yet even with our irregulars, we should have enough quality to beat a Championship side decimated by injury, choc full of inexperience and struggling to avoid relegation on a ground where we have not lost since 1958 (a 5-4 defeat in a game where we were 4-0 down before fighting back to 4-4).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hazard that we will be the first team to put more than two goals past Pompey at home this season and that a 3-0 win will see us through to the 4th round for the first time in three seasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Enjoy the game, &#8216;holics, near and far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images And so to historic Fratton Park with its mock Tudor half-timbered entrance for the 3rd Round of the FA Cup. Portsmouth v Arsenal has the ring of titanic clashes of long ago, when shorts were baggy, wingers bow-legged and football still in black and white. Yet we were last at Fratton [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12629"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12646,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12629\/revisions\/12646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}