Portsmouth 2026/27 Season Review
Originally Posted by
Dan
Overall I'd say it's going roughly as expected, but we have a big few months ahead & we definitely can't afford a new years slump like we've done in the last couple of seasons, or else we'll be looking at a proper fight for survival.
Our first season back in the Prem is over, and after an inconsistent start to the season we were well positioned for survival, but certainly not able to stop looking over our shoulders.
The League
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Pretty much the same as the first half of the season, with one good month, one bad month & a lot of inconsistency the rest of the time. In the end we were never really in any threat of relegation & we finished a respectable 12th place, just ahead of Chelsea, who won the Champions League with a caretaker manager, which sounds oddly familiar.
Overall I'd say the season went about as well as we could have realistically hoped, as we looked like we could hang with most of the league & I'm optimistic we can build towards a challenge for Europe in the next couple of seasons if things go well. We've got about £50m to spend next season, although the wage budget didn't really increase so I'll probably have to move some money around to ensure we can get deals done.
The Cups
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Very happy with our performance here as we made the semi finals of both the EFL Cup & the FA Cup before losing to a Manchester side in both. I'm not really bothered about either competition though, so this will probably be as good as it gets for a while.
The Players
I'll break these down by position group again:
Goalkeeper:
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We brought in
Magnus Smelhus Sjøeng to be our number one this season, but his first year with us was pretty frustrating as he was frequently injured & played inconsistently when he was healthy, so I'm a bit uncertain about his long term future between the sticks. We have a solid veteran backup in
Josh Vickers, and I also signed promising youngster
Christ Asumani, who might be the long term solution, but I'm keeping an eye out for potential upgrades so maybe we'll make another move over the summer.
Defenders:
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This was mostly the same unit as last year, with
Sean Roughan at LB,
Loic Mbe Soh &
Joao Fonseca in the middle & club captain
Regan Poole on the right. We added
Simon Walde, who will hopefully develop into our starting RB, although he's suddenly got some competition in the form of
Zbigniew Urbanski, who came through this year's youth intake & immediately joined the first team squad. We also loaned in
Adam Aznou on the left, but he's agreed to join Real Sociedad at the end of the season so I'll be looking for another left back for next season.
Malachi Fagan-Walcott played well as our third CB, and we've managed to sign Fonseca permanently for £10m, which seems like a great price for the current
European Golden Boy, so even though I have a few interesting CBs on my shortlist I doubt we'll be making any moves there as we can always move Poole back if needed.
Midfielders:
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Eli Junior Kroupi proved to be the steal I'd expected, as he put in some excellent performance at both AMC & AMR, winning
PFA Young Player of the Year in the process. I think his long term future is at AMC, but we still have
Alex Robertson too so EJK might find himself splitting time again next year.
Paddy Lane continues to be a solid performer on either wing, but after three seasons on loan it looks like we'll be losing
Joel Ndala as he doesn't want to join permanently, and fellow loanee
Shaquille Van Persie will also be leaving having given us a solid year of football. We have a couple of talented newgens in
Martin Hansen Nygaard &
Hamza Bensabouh who should help fill out the attacking options in the squad, but it does feel like wingers will be needed for next year.
Charlie Patino had an injury hit season, allowing
Miguel Azeez to get some extra time as our deep lying playmaker, and next to him we started the season with
Joe Morell getting most of the time, with
Felix Lemarechal &
Filippo Ranocchia serving as the next guys up. In January we added
Leopold Uhlig for a bargain £3.5m, and he quickly took over as the second CM - we also have a lot of good newgen CMs that have come thorough our academy in the last few years, so I'm planning to move Morrell to make room for one or two of them to join the squad.
Strikers:
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Arnaud Kalimuendo was our most important player in my eyes, finishing second in the league with 27 goals & our results seemed to have a strong correlation with his play. At the complete opposite end of the scale, however, was
Youssef Chermiti, who had a miserable time, scoring only three goals all season, two of which came against Championship sides in the FA Cup. He will not be back, and
Leo Scaltriti will probably be the main backup striker next year, although I do think we'll need to look at adding someone here to be safe.
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Other Stuff
We're now getting the big stadium expansion I'd hoped for, with 10,000 seats being added to Fratton Park, although it does mean we have to move to Southampton for a year We're also continuing to improve our youth setup & training facilities, which seems smart when we've made £50m this year.
I don't think this will be a particularly exciting summer, but there are definitely a few spots I'll be looking to target & if we can hit on our moves we should be well set up for a good future.