Football Season Guide

Portsmouth have been surrounded by a positive atmosphere since becoming the country's largest fan-owned club four years ago. Pompey started off as a club that feared relegation from the Football League, only to improve with each passing season and finally achieve promotion at the end of the 2016/17 as champions. They lost their manager Paul Cook during the summer, as he took the vacant manager's position at Wigan, but have replaced him well with Kenny Jackett. In him, they have an experienced manager proven in both the Championship and League One. Pompey will be hoping for last season's promotion to only be the first of the several in the years to come, with the ultimate goal to return to their former level and return to the top flight. Of course, they have quite some work to do before even contemplating that but a mere look at their fan boards is enough to see that a large percent of their faithful is hoping for Pompey to claim back-to-back promotions, which is hardly unheard of. The feat was last achieved by Burton just over a year ago. They have lost two important players in Enda Stevens and Michael Doyle, who joined Sheffield United and Coventry respectively, but have been able to bring in rather interesting signings. Nathan Thompson is widely considered to be one of the best League One defenders whilst Brett Pitman and Tareiq Holmes-Dennis are both fine players at this level. Given that two players were promoted from the Under-18 side, Pompey have actually made only four signings so far this summer and it has been clear that Jackett wanted to complete his transfer activity as early as possible. With several players from their squad from last season being well-known League One names, Pompey definitely seem to be well-equipped to compete in the third tier, with the particularly impressive thing about them being their squad depth.