Portsmouth just about negotiated their tricky second Championship album despite the meltdown at Loftus Road in March, but can there be more to life than getting to 52 points in 26/27 for John Mousinho's men? We spoke to @PompeyJonny to find out...

How was last season?

I was quite optimistic at the start of last season. I thought we'd kick on. Instead we essentially had pretty much a mirror image of the season we'd had first time back. When you end up with the start that we had and you’re right down in there towards the end of January once you stay up, you'll take it. We've been in League One and League Two for so many years, even the worst seasons where you're not going up you're finishing seventh or eighth and winning most weekends. The trade off being in the Championship is ‘oh yeah, back in the big time’ and all that, but most of the weekends are more miserable because you’re losing.

I think a lot of Pompey fans would agree Colby Bishop is probably a top League One striker. There was the romance of his first season back when he’d had the heart condition and then turned up on the bench unannounced and scored 11 goals. Brilliant. Couldn’t ask for more from him. But I thin, realistically, the level caught up with him a bit. Injuries didn't help us. Josh Murphy played less than half the games last season. Calum Lang had been brilliant the season before and his hamstring fell off again, then we sold him in January. There's a lot of things you can blame. Again, a lack of real money being spent. Buying players in the Swedish and the Hungarian leagues – you can find gems that way, but it is tricky.

Pompey in the league last year…
Oxford 0-1 Pompey Segecic 38
Pompey 1-2 Norwich Segecic 84 – Darling 6, Sargent 14
West Brom 1-1 Pompey Johnston 26 – Bishop 56
Pompey 1-0 Preston Dozzell 41
Southampton 0-0 Pompey
Pompey 0-2 Sheff Wed Bannan 12, Brown 50
Ipswich 2-1 Pompey Philogene 9, Hirst 41 – Pack 90
Pompey 2-2 Watford Min-Hyeok 5, Segecic 79 – Louza 46, Vata 56
Pompey 1-0 Boro Min-Hyeok 23
Leicester 1-1 Pompey Ramsey 26 – Swift 58
Pompey 1-2 Coventry Kirk 90 – Thomas-Asante 30, 56
Pompey 0-1 Stoke Matthews og 70
Birmingham 4-0 Pompey Seung-Ho 9, Iwata 56, Klarer 61, Anderson 88
Pompey 0-0 Wrexham
Hull 3-2 Pompey Destan 27, Joseph 42, Gelhardt 79 – Devlin 15, 45
Portsmouth 3-1 Millwall Swanson 22, Segecic 51, Williams 89 – Ivanovic 72
Sheff Utd 3-0 Pompey Peck pen 41, Bamford 54, Hamer 73
Pompey 0-1 Bristol City Mehmeti 17
Swansea 1-0 Pompey Cullen 78
Pompey 2-1 Blackburn Lang 62, Bowat 79 – Ohashi 36
Derby 1-1 Pompey Matthews og 45 – Lang 6
Pompey 1-1 QPR Devlin 45 – Dunne 60
Pompey 2-1 Charlton Shaughnessy 69, Min-Hyeok 90 – Knibbs 90
Bristol City 5-0 Pompey Randell 11, Mehmeti 24, Twine 50, Armstrong 59, 90
Sheff Wed 0-1 Pompey Segecic 65
Watford 1-1 Pompey Doumbia 79 – Segecic 73
Pompey 1-1 Southampton Adams 77 – Scienza 57
Pompey 3-0 West Brom Chaplin 20, Alli 25, Adams 49
Preston 1-0 Pompey Devine 40
Pompey 0-1 Sheff Utd Brooks 90
Charlton 1-3 Pompey Fevrier 64 – Devlin 22, 56, Bishop pen 35
Millwall 1-3 Pompey De Norre 64 – Caballero 46, Swift 55, Pack 67
Wrexham 2-1 Pompey Smith 23, Cleworth 39 – Swanson 49
Pompey 0-1 Hull Crooks 73
Blackburn 1-1 Pompey Carter 90 – Ogilvie 84
Pompey 1-2 Swansea Brown 64 – Galbraith 26, Key 39
Pompey 0-1 Derby Szmodics 8
QPR 6-1 Pompey Smyth 7, 29, Kolli 24, 55, Kone pen 86, 87 – Swift 38
Norwich 1-1 Pompey Mattson 28 – Mattson og 84
Pompey 2-2 Oxford Anderson 9, Dozzell 87 – Spencer 48, Lankshear 81
Boro 0-1 Pompey Chaplin 90
Pompey 2-0 Ipswich Shaughnessy 42, Bishop 44
Pompey 1-0 Leicester Bowat 63
Coventry 5-1 Pompey Wright 12, Mason-Clark 47, 76, Poole og 50, Kesler-Hayden 90 – Segecic 69
Stoke 1-3 Pompey Cisse 48 – Segecic 32, 66, 82
Pompey 1-1 Birmingham Segecic 8 – Priske 19

Where are we on John Mousinho, linked with Bristol City this summer?

It’s hard to know where we are. If he'd been Bristol City's first choice, would he be here? I think is the question. I think it's fairly obvious that he wasn't their first choice.

I think there are very few managers that would have kept us up the last two seasons with the resources and frankly some of the players that he's had to play. However, not to give too much credit to our ownership, but I don't think there are many clubs that would have allowed him to stay on, given some of the lows that we hit in terms of runs of form. I'm not sure if it ever got to chanting at games, but obviously the lowest point of the season was at your place where he decided to play Ebou Adams as a ‘ten’. He's got to take some of the fault for that because I love Ebou but he is one of the least technical footballers I've ever seen in my life. He's a workhorse.

So some of the substitutions don't make sense. The tactics aren’t always brilliant, but in terms of getting more from a squad than the sum of its parts I don't think there are many better in the league. I think the interesting thing will be October, November. Let's say a Birmingham or someone like that, have had a bad start to the season and want to make a change. Would he be interested?

What changed after that debacle at Loftus Road because you only lost one more game and won four to stay up when you’d looked dead at our place?

It was just before an international break, which could not have come at a better time. And then we came back and I think it was Easter weekend and we had Norwich away and we were poor and managed to somehow keep it down to 1-0 for most of the game and then nicked an own goal equaliser. Then on the Monday we had Oxford at home and only managed to draw 2-2 because of a red card, but it was a couple of backs against the walls, right? There's the spirit still here, and then we went up to Boro at the weekend, and again I'd love to see what the XG was on that. I don't think we had a shot on target before someone hit the ball off Conor Chaplin's dick in the 96th minute, and it went in. I wanted us to take the corner shot, preserve the point. It comes back to the manager. We are the team that went to Millwall and won, went to Boro and won. We’re just better with our backs to the wall, in that QPR game we actually created a fair few chances.

Unusually, a little bit of money spent this summer…

You’ll laugh but the first thing we’ve got to do is replace Andre Dozzell. Andre the Friendly Ghost, I believe you called him, and our first six months with him was very much like that -very lightweight and when it's not going your way he's useless completely – but he did start putting himself about a bit more and have a very level head when we had the ball. So, we’ve signed an Estonian called Rocco Shein to play there and I liked the look of him in the German pre-season game, kept the ball well, always looked for it on the half turn and all that sort of stuff.

Marko Milovanovic the big Serbian striker is the big thing for us. It’s a change in policy, the most we’ve spent on a player since the Premier League days, ten goals in the Portuguese top division last season.

Abu Kamara we had on loan in League One and hasn’t had a happy time at Hull but he’s young and he was fantastic for us when he was last here. Kamara, Josh Murphy and the Serbian moves me as a front three, but then this time last year I thought Conor Chaplin would be a gamechanger for us.

The other main thing is keeping Terry Devlin. I'm surprised he's still here. There haven't been that many whispers. I thought Wrexham would have been big in for him. I think he will finish the season as the best right back in the Championship unequivocally. That’s the trajectory he's been on. Maybe not the world's best defender, but works hard enough that he makes up for it. And going forward, he's just unbelievable.

Ins >>> Marko Milovanovic, 22, CD, Almeria, £3m >>> Rocco Shein, 22, CM, Fredrikstad (Norway), £2m >>> Daniel Bielica, 27, GK, Breda, £500k >>> Luke Brooke-Smith, 18, AM, Wellington, £400k >>> Eoin Kenny, 20, CF, Dundalk, £30k >>> Odin Bailey, 26, AM, Stockport, Free >>> Abu Kamara, 23, RW, Hull, Undisclosed

Outs >>> Andre Dozzell, 27, CM, DC United, Free >>> Reuben Swann, 20, CM, Braintree, Free >>> Makenzie Kirk, 22, CF, Barnsley, Loan >>> Toby Steward, 21, GK, St Johnstone, Loan >>> Jordan Archer, 33, GK, Released >>> Harry Clout, 19, AM, Released

Your chairman described the division as a “financial catastrophe” last season and has been pretty reticent to put his hand in his pocket, where are you with him?

I mean the man's a billionaire, so I'm already just morally imposed to his existence. But you know, Wrexham looks fun, like they look like having a nice time. I'm not actually asking for us to do a Wrexham, I want us to be financially responsible, but we've had one of the bottom four budgets over the two years we've been in the Championship, and our owners are in the top three of the richest people. So when he went on his big rant about how the Championship is a money pit and football in this country is broken, and the Premier League needs to share more of the revenue with the lower divisions… he's absolutely correct… but a billionaire telling me that money needs to be distributed more fairly across those that deserve it more. I'm not listening to that from you.

I don't think he believes on this on any sort of moral level. I think he just wants an excuse for why he's not been spending money. However, the money spent on the Serbian bloke is a step in the right direction. But God, he better work out because if he doesn't then that's all the excuse he’ll need to never spend money ever again.

How do you see this weekend and this season going?

I'm not that knowledgeable in terms of what you've done this summer, but I would expect a difficult game. I would hope first day Fratton Park atmosphere will actually be good because people haven't been for a while. Of again, it's really difficult to know.

Whether or not we can kick on this season again depends on the level of recruitment that we do. I don't think the league will be as weak this year as it was last season. There is not a Sheff Wed-type gimme team down there. Obviously, Leicester had the deduction. I mean, obviously, it probably won't be of any concern to us but the size of the relegated teams coming down, West Ham for instance, Wolves go out and sign Raul Jiminez which was depressing. Frankly the league table looks fantastic to me right now. If you want to call it where it is right now, if whoever might be bottom at the moment we keep them where they are, then that's absolutely fine by me.

Links >>> Portsmouth official website >>> Fratton Park Ground Guide >>> True Blue Army – Forum >>> P04Cast – Podcast >>> Pompey Chimes – Forum >>> The News – Local Press

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