Having won four home games in a row, we couldn’t have much more motivation to make it five than the identity of today’s opponents who don’t have to travel very far to get here. Yep, Pompey are in town. As far as the fans are concerned, this will be a game where as is usual these days, there will be no contact, with the Pompey fans being herded around in their bubble, straight into a compound behind the Chapel / Kingsland corner of the ground.

Pompey currently sit 19th in the table on eight points, just the two behind us with our deduction, though they do have a game in hand. Two wins, two draws and three defeats means they are following more or less the pattern of last season of being very very average and on course, as usual, to spend the vast majority of the season just above the relegation zone and just above it will be where they will inevitably finish – the turd that won’t flush. It might look like they’re going to go down or that they might get dragged into it at various points of the season, but they never fucking do and always win a couple of home games towards the end of the season when there’s always a couple of teams who turn up at Fratton Park and don’t fancy it. These wins tend to keep them out of trouble.

With many things being the same as they were last season, one thing that is surprisingly the same is that John Mousinho is still in charge, as he looked to have reached the end of his rope at various times at the tail end of last season and it was widely expected that he’d depart in the summer but for whatever reason it didn’t happen. The truth probably is that he has taken them as far as he can go, but just couldn’t snag himself a better job.

By their standards they have actually backed him and spent a bit of money this summer with Marco Millovanovic, Abu Kamara , Tyrese Shade and Rocco Shein all arriving for around the £2 million to £2.5 million quid mark. One familiar name in their ranks this season is Jaden Meghoma, who of course left us for Brentford and has now arrived at Fratton Park on loan for the season. Let’s hope that he still plays at left back and has not learned how to defend. My abiding memory of him is being really good going forward and spending most of the game chasing back to get goal-side of the winger who had already beaten him.

Saints of course, had seen the buildup to the game disrupted by the interminable wait for the FA to make their fucking mind up… and then they did. Well, fair play, I got this one spectacularly wrong. After the summer verdict, the endless outrage, and a national media campaign that made it sound like Eckert and Phil Parsons were going to be the inspiration to Guy Ritchie’s next gangster series, I was fully expecting the FA to launch Tonda directly into the sea, or at the very least, ban him for long enough that we had to fire him. Instead, what we’ve got is a punishment that is actually pretty consistent with previous cases. Strip away all the hysteria and social media pearl-clutching and it turns out the rulebook hasn’t been rewritten after all. Tonda’s fine works out at roughly £10,000 per offence, Bielsa got £200,000 for a season’s worth of spying. The fine and a suspended 6-week total football ban is the verdict. The FA wanted more but the independent commission thought otherwise. Saga over. It’s amazing what happens when process is followed and the independent commission is truly independent.

To be honest, this feels like common sense prevailing. The purpose of any punishment is pretty straightforward. Punish the wrongdoing, stop the person doing it again, and send a message to everyone else. Job done. They’ve taken into account the punishment already handed down by the EFL – the suspended ban means Tonda knows he can’t get his binoculars out again and I can’t see any manager looking at everything that he and the club have gone through over the last few months and thinking, “Yeah, that’s worth it”.

The bottom line is though, he’s still a very lucky boy. What annoys me most when I think about the whole shitshow is what was taken away from supporters. Saints fans don’t get many occasions like Wembley, promotion chances, huge games and a chance of those massive moments that live with you forever. There was absolutely no need to put all of that at risk. Dragan’s decision to stand by him was a huge gamble, giving the FA the opportunity to piss all over his chips, but in the end it’s worked out. I also enjoyed the dig at the EFL process in the club statement. Even in victory, Dragan is still swinging.

Social media is a funny thing – I get how it works and that it’s basically a race for clicks, and I know that I’ll probably be accused of being a miserable git, but I can’t get on board with the triumphalism. Man is allowed to keep job after breaking rules and robbing fans of a huge game at Wembley and the chance of getting promoted. As for Tonda, there’s a pretty simple way to make this right. Get us promoted – he owes us that.

The biggest positive is that the whole thing is finished. Done. Over. Filed away. No appeal. No fresh hearing popping up in April – unless Steve Gibson appeals. No more uncertainty hanging over the club. Pompey fans had spent the last few weeks convincing themselves this was somehow going to derail our season and hand them a psychological edge on Sunday. Unfortunately for them, that’s gone now as well and if anything, the exact opposite has happened. Saints have had a lift and a cloud has been removed.

So after months of being told Eckert will be gone, we’re left with a punishment that feels entirely reasonable, a manager still in place, and a promotion race to focus on. Debate will rage as to whether it’s soft or not but we should not concern ourselves with what others think – the debate is pointless now though it’ll be interesting to see how the Middlesbrough fans who wanted a dead body and a chalk outline will deal with this. At this stage it’s nothing to do with them and no Middlesbrough opinion matters. It stopped being about them the moment they got put into the playoff final. We weren’t the reason they didn’t get promoted – they did that themselves.

So, not quite the crime of the century after all and despite the verdict being released, we are not the main story these days – that of course is the Manchester City case. Our three games of offences is considerably less than their ten years. I’m still waiting for Manchester City to get kicked out of last season‘s FA Cup to allow Saints to play Chelsea in the final. John Mousinho made a comment about Spygate when he said that if anyone wants to watch Pompey train, all they have to do is rock up and buy a coffee, or words to that effect, essentially minimising the whole thing. Pompey keyboard warriors are almost as bad as Boro fans for pearl-clutching, yet stay remarkably quiet when Portsmouth fans are attacking opposition players with fists or spitting at them as they run down the wing at Fratton Park.

Anyway, the international break has been the predictable bollocks that it always is with both Daniel Peretz and Cyle Larin reporting minor injuries. First though the positives – Kuryu Matsuki has started his Japanese International career in fine fashion and is now looking likely to be selected for the Asia Cup which, with Japan almost certainly going deep into the tournament, will mean that he misses five games later on in the season. It’s hard to gripe about this to be quite honest because he thoroughly deserves all the success that comes his way.

The Larin injury just seems like a muscle twinge and he should be OK, but the Peretz injury throws Aaron Ramsdale‘s name back into the mix. In the normal scheme of things you would expect your number 2 keeper to play but if Aaron Ramsdale is available and you play George Long, in a game against Portsmouth – and then Long fucks up, then you are laying yourself open to get absolutely fucking slaughtered in a way that will make any punishment from the FA seem like child’s play.

For what it’s worth, I think the situation we have with the goalkeeping unit this season is perfectly simple. Daniel Peretz is clearly the number 1, George Long is the number 2 and Jamie Jones is the number 3. The number 2 goalkeeper has the role of sitting on the bench and playing in an absolute red card / injury emergency. The number 3 goalkeeper is there to help with the warm-ups and that’s it. We also have Aaron Ramsdale who is of course, a number 1 goalkeeper, so I cannot imagine for a minute that he won’t be starting the game against Portsmouth should Peretz be injured and the number 2 and number 3 stay exactly where they were and do exactly what they were brought to the club to do. No one will be expecting George Long to play – not George himself, none of the fans, his mum and dad, his wife and kids. You have a choice between picking Aaron Ramsdale and George Long for a huge game that you cannot lose through doing something stupid. No one picks George Long unless they’re from Portsmouth. Pompey have keeper selection issues of their own – why give us the same?

Last year of course, this game was fucking tedious as Pompey set out to waste time from the first whistle and we’re allowed to do it by a referee, who then stopped the game approximately every thirty seconds. The biggest pisser about the whole game was the fact that we went into it with Will Still in charge, and though we didn’t lose, it was one of the games that made me severely worried about which way we were going under him. We were tentative and no one wanted to put their hand up and be the hero. We stood off and allowed Pompey to walk to half-way before engaging. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since that game of course and it’s all the water (and shit) that went on at the end of the season and the subsequent FA investigation which has meant that I haven’t really given that lot from down the road too much of a thought this season. They are what they usually are and we need to fucking win this one, especially given our last performance, which was the abject defeat at Wrexham.

This game is of course about much more than the three points at stake. This game is everything to the supporters of both clubs and after last years two draws kicked the can down the road for a year, fans of both sides will be even more desperate to get the three points today. Neither team has won a league game against the other since the 2004/2005 season. We have to get the win and send them back home in their own miserable bubble. You put these eleven Pompey players in another teams shirt and we beat them comfortably, so we have to play the players in front of us and not the occasion.

The fan experience inside and outside at St Mary’s for derby games is so different to what it was. Even back is 2004 I recall strolling through mounted police on my way to the game and my eyes darting right and left for any sight of opposition fans. There was an edge and a sense of danger. It was never ‘getting pelted with bricks walking down Goldsmith Avenue’ danger but there was a definite feeling that transmitted to heightened tensions inside the ground. There’s none of that now and that should maybe allow us to have a better chance of just concentrating on the game.

As I said, part of the problem last year was that we played with fear. There should be none of that this year. I expect JWP and Flynn Downes to be in their faces and if our forward line fires then we will be in for a great Sunday lunchtime. Leo Scienza will be all over this. He will want to be the hero and it’s the kind of stage he loves and he prioritises fan reaction to him above nearly everything and he will know that there’s no better game to perform in than this one (apart from maybe the away game). As long as Azaz and Larin come back fully healthy from international duty then we can look forward to this with confidence.

It’s a game of course where legends are made. Mention the name ‘Steve Moran’ and what goal do you think of? More recently, Danny Ings scored quite a few goals for Saints and you can recall a fair few of them – what two do you think about straight away? Yep, the knee-slides. In recent-ish times, James Beattie, Marian Pahars, Matt Oakley, Peter Crouch, Kevin Phillips, Nathan Redmond, Jim Magilton, Neil Shipperley and even players like Dexter Blackstock and bloody Cedric are a fond memory for goals in wins in this fixture. At the end of a bit of week for Tonda Eckert, he should be looking to cash in and be mentioned in the same breath as Lawrie McMenemy, Gordon Strachan and…. erm… Steve Wigley as Saints managers who have won this fixture. We had another manager who won one as well but he can go fuck himself.

Tonda got through his press duties for the game and after all the FA verdict questions, we got down to the important stuff about the game. It looks like both Peretz and Larin will be fit, which saves everyone from the Ramsdale discussion and all that’s left now is for Tonda not to overthink it (which is a danger as he’s had three weeks without a game) and send our best team out there and get the job done. Sounds easy doesn’t it? It won’t be.

Bring it on…