Gaffer For A Day: Portsmouth haven't spent enough - and then aren't getting value on those bought. It has to change
Gaffer For A Day, Mark Docherty, aged 36 from Leeds, assesses Pompey’s 5-0 defeat at Bristol City...
So how do you sum that up?
It could have been eight, easily a lot more than 5-0, so we can’t really have any complaints.
It was shades of West Brom from January 2025, as soon as the line-up came out, you were fearing what could happen. Only this time it was because of the lack of availability rather than squad rotation.
But I still think it's pretty telling that, at this stage of the season, there’s still a whole crop of players that Mousinho clearly doesn’t trust. Players like Luke Le Roux, even though I don’t think he was the worst one against Bristol City, while Ibane Bowat looked massively lacking in confidence.
To go halfway through the season and you’re having to start players that you clearly don’t rate is pretty concerning.
Can you even pick a Pompey man of the match?
It’s between Terry Devlin and Regan Poole, but I’m going for Devlin. He worked hard throughout, even if nothing really came off for him.
Poole was pretty exposed, especially when he went to right-back, but those are the two whose effort never really dipped.
You know what you are going to get from Devlin, particularly at right-back, that’s an important quality, particularly when a lot of the centre-backs he’s been playing with have been chopping and changing. He’s very reliable.
I’d say Devlin is coming into contention to be Player of the Season. You would expect a lot of the attackers to be in the conversation, but they have missed a lot of games for various reasons.
What do Pompey need to do in this transfer window?
We need a big January, there’s no hiding place. Players have to be brought in and, in combination, we need a turn in luck with injuries.
When we went on our good run last season, we were pretty much putting the same 15 players out every game, whereas everything is chopping and changing at the moment.
We need 4-5 players who can come in and effect the season - and we need a good chunk of our players in the physio room to come back and not be worried about them breaking down every week.
Our wish list should be a central midfielder, a right winger, a striker, and a left-back. If we have any room left, I wouldn’t mind a centre-back, but I wouldn’t put that at the top of my list.
Why are Pompey in this predicament with the squad?
It’s a combination of the owners, Rich Hughes or whoever does the recruitment.
Obviously having one of the lowest budgets in the Championship is a huge part of it, but then you look at where the money has been spent. Players like Le Roux and Josh Knight cost more than £1m, Hayden Matthews has had his injuries.
Where money has been spent, we aren’t really getting a return on that as yet. It’s a little more complicated than just the owners not putting enough money in, but that’s definitely part of it.
The first month or so we expected players like Le Roux and Mark Kosznovszky to initially adjust, before becoming the first couple of names on the team-sheet, certainly coming into this stage of the season.
Le Roux wouldn’t have been in the squad at Bristol City had it not been for injuries, while Kosznovszky has looked decent recently, but is another who has now gone down injured.
Nicolas Schmid - 3
Regan Poole - 4
Conor Shaughnessy - 3
Ibane Bowat - 2
Terry Devlin - 5
Zak Swanson - 4
Luke Le Roux - 4 (Harvey Blair - 4)
Andre Dozzell - 3
John Swift - 4
Adrian Segecic - 3
Makenzie Kirk - 3