I like my football stats to have a certain neatness about them and was rather taken when I discovered that the 2024-25 season was the 22nd out of the 44 I had been a match-going Pompey fan spent in what we called in old money the second division.
Likewise, I was quite content to find that the season just finished was the 15th season (of my updated total of 45) in which Pompey had finished in the bottom half ot the second tier.
It didn’t surprise me when I checked the records to see how many had ended in such a position, because I’ve long felt the division they now call the Championship is Pompey’s natural home and – as the figures show – I’ve spent a fair bit of my 45 seasons watching a team in the wrong half.
By the way, in checking our Division 2 finishes of a generation ago, I was stunned to discover the 1989-90 season, half of which had John Gregory in our dugout, did not result in a bottom half finish. I refuse to give Gregory any credit for that – it must all have been down to the Frankie Burrows-inspired revival that lifted spirits after Gregory had been shown the door after less than a year in charge.
Anyhow, I digress. I’m supposed to be summing up what I thought of the 25-26 season. And to be honest, I’m still finding it hard to judge.
When we first went up to the Championship I predicted a ninth-placed finish – being the over-optimistic type I often am where Pompey are concerned. We finished 16th.
This time, I thought we could do better but still lowered my sights and went for 11th. We ended up 18th – again, seven places lower than I’d dared dream about.
Maybe next season if I tip us to win the league, we’ll finish 8th – which will of course, ridiculously, get us into the play-offs. Don’t get me started on that whole new idea, either.
I think maybe many fans’ opinions on whether our second season in the Champ can be judged acceptable or not are yet to be finalised, because the final feeling will depend on whether or not will keep hold of John Mousinho.
Amid growing worries that Bristol City will tempt him west, I think if Pompey now were to put enough in front of him to convince him to stay, we could call that progress – or at least a situation which would give us real chance of progress. But if he’s lured away, I think many will look back on this season as one in which we’ve gone backwards and will perhaps conclude we’re no more established in the Championship than on the day we won promotion.
Keep the manager, give him and Richard Hughes something like a mid-table budget and you’ve got yourself a chance of a more comfortable season, maybe even one in which we can mooch about in the top half for a bit and threaten to gatecrash those over-elongated play-offs. It doesn’t feel like too much to ask.
But if JM is at Ashton Gate (or even somewhere else) come August and not at Fratton Park, then there will be plenty of back-to-square one, we’ll-be-lucky-to-stay-up-again comments and worries doing the rounds, and probably talk of protests too and questions over how he could and should have been tempted to stay.
The 2025-26 season is a really tough season to assess, I think. It ebbed and flowed, it had its up and downs, but not in the same way 2024-25 did. In that season, it was a poor first third and a decent-enough final two thirds – and the marked difference between home and away form, at least from November onwards, was clear. It was like two different teams. This time we’ve ended up one point better off, and we’ve done it with a variety of good spells and bad spells varying in length.
The 24-25 season, for me, had one moment that made all the difference – it was when Colby Bishop was named on the teamsheet to face Preston, way ahead of when anyone thought we’d see him. That changed the whole feeling and the course of the year. I’m not sure 25-26 had anything like that – but there are some goals I would pick out as being huge in the context of the battle to stay up.
Ibane Bowat’s headed winner at home to Blackburn in December – a game we’d gone into on the back of a dreadful run of results – was massive, so was Min-hyeok Yang’s winner at home to Charlton less than a minute after the crushing blow of their equaliser, and Andre Dozzell’s late equaliser against Oxford ended up being more important than it felt on the day, setting us up as it did for those three glorious wins in eight days v Boro, Ipswich and the Hapless Hoofers. And for the record, I hope Bowat’s winner v the latter outfit DID go in off his hand.
Overall, we had the same number of wins (14) as in 24-25, but one more draw. We secured safety with two games to spare in both seasons, but second time around we scored nine fewer goals (49) and conceded seven fewer (64). On paper they look like very similar campaigns, yet to me they didn’t feel similar.
I still think back to the game at St Mary’s on September 14. I watched that and was quite excited afterwards about our prospects. Even though we didn’t score that day I remember thinking the trio of Colby Bishop-Conor Chaplin-Josh Murphy, especially with Callum Lang due to return and make it a foursome, was going to do damage to plenty of teams and we’d be flying before long. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In the event not one of that quartet had the season we thought they could. Bishop just couldn’t score – though I still rate his overall contribution to the team this season vey highly. Chaplin never found the levels we were convinced he’d show when he came back, but I still think he had his moments and is worth considering for next season. Lang looked good when he did come back from injury but it didn’t last and he back to the north-west he went, then Murphy, who we’re now told was probably no better than 50% fit all season, got crocked and we had to do without him.
Luckily others stepped up. But given all those setbacks, we did well to keep grinding out the wins we did
Adrian Segecic had a superb start and end to the season, and if his late revival in form had come just that little bit sooner, he might have challenged Terry Devlin in some of the player-of-the-season award votes. Andre Dozzell was quietly excellent for a second season running – just look at results while he was out in February and March and how they improved when he returned – and is a big loss to the squad.
Marlon Pack rose to the many challenges put his way and ended up playing about as many games as I thought he would, when some had written him off as no more than a fringe player at the start of 25-26. I wouldn’t bet against him playing another 30 games next term either.
Yang deserves to be remembered for some vital goals, even if his early promise wasn’t realised. I still think it would have suited all parties better if he’d stayed with us for the season and not been sent to Coventry. And the January additions of Ebou Adams and Milli Alli had the desired effect, even if Alli’s form evened out and Adams’ obvious influence was halted by his injury at QPR.
At the back, Regan Poole was my player of the season and deserves much credit for the level of consistency he showed despite playing alongside 23 different central defensive partners. Okay, slight exaggeration, but it must have felt like that many to Poole. Conor Shaughnessy’s injury problems were a huge setback – I still wonder how our campaign might have looked if he had not picked up that injury that led to Sheffield Wednesday’s first, and very nearly only, win of the season. At least we got Shocks back at the business end of proceedings.
On almost the same patch of grass as Shaughnessy’s injury six-and-a-half months later, Connor Ogilvie’s red-card tackle against Oxford blotted his copybook somewhat, but Ogs still had a great season. Mr Dependable. And the aforementioned Devlin was a revelation pretty much all along. So, to a lesser extent, was Zak Swanson, and on a more occasional basis, Jordan Williams never let us down.
If we were to start 26-27 with the same defensive line-up as we have worked with this season, I would not be overly concerned. It seems likely Devlin will move on – you’d hope for a big sum – but if we were to begin with Ogilvie, Shaughnessy, Poole, Swanson, Williams, Hayden Matthews and Bowat, it would not be a weak department – but I would imagine Pompey are looking to add to it in any case.
Nico Schmid had a decent season if not quite one that was at his 24-25 levels. There were so many tight games in which he produced one stand-out save that earned vital points and if next season begins as a battle for the jersey between him and Toby Steward, it will be a fascinating one to see unfold.
One of my recent PompeySound chats with Tommy Boyd (shameless plug – give them a listen on YouTube or Spotify if you get the chance), he asked me how much change to the squad there could be this summer, and I forecast that up to 10 of those in the 2025-26 ranks (loanees included) could be elsewhere by the time we return. I stand by that number – and if Mousinho does depart, it may require an even bigger rebuild.
I am not sure any of the loanees have done enough to spark bids to bring them back on a permanent basis (though I do think the jury is out on Chaplin) and I imagine Hughes and Co are already well into drawing up their wish-list. I hope they aim high and go for one or two names that will get fans’ hopes up, an Adam Webster or a Freddie Potts for example. The recruitment team should not be put off going for a ‘big’ player or two by the fact that neither Chaplin nor John Swift worked the magic we thought tbey would. And a striker who can be a direct rival to Bishop for the No9 shirt must surely be on the radar.
But it’s Pompey, so who knows what will happen? There will be names we’ve never heard of unveiled, and rumours that go on for months that then just fizzle out. But come August, we’ll all be back with hope in our hearts, and probably doubts in our heads too. Dare we dream for a finish in the half of that second division that we’re not quite so familiar with? Or will it be 16 in 46 for me this time next year?
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