Football Season Guide

Portsmouth have been League One's nearly side in the last few years, with both of their last two campaigns seeing them reach the play-offs, but fail to achieve promotion. A lot of pressure was put on Kenny Jackett to deliver promotion before the previous season started, but he once again failed to deliver, with Pompey starting slowly and therefore never having a shot at direct promotion, eventually doing well to even reach the play-offs. It is debatable whether the experienced manager would have still been in charged had he failed to deliver promotion without the pandemic but, as things stand, he can try again. While Pompey performed well in the later stages of the previous campaign, a large portion of the fan base believes that the club should have returned to the Championship a while ago and Jackett can expect to find himself under pressure if his side do not start well and is almost certain to lose his job if Portsmouth start the campaign as poorly as they did the previous one. There have been some ins and outs, but the core of the squad is pretty much unchanged as it was last time around. Portsmouth have already shown that their top level is up there with the best in the league but now need to maintain it for long enough to finally achieve promotion.