Michael Pantling deler sine tanker før seriestart i vår comebacksesong i Championship.

MENINGER: Vår medlem nummer 39, Michael Pantling, er bosatt i Danmark, men pleier å reise over til England for å se Pompey flere ganger i sesongen enn noen andre av våre medlemmer.

Han deler jevnlig sine tanker og meninger om Pompey med oss. Denne gangen ser Michael på sesongen vi har foran oss.

LES OGSÅ: Endelig tilbake der vi hører hjemme

Good to be Back

Pompey are finally back where they belong (as a minimum) and it has taken far too long to get there.

The big question is whether or not Pompey are good enough to stay in the Championship. Saturday’s match against Leeds is going to be a huge challenge with most pundits suggesting that Leeds are most likely to be promoted to the Premier League this season.

It is probably to our advantage that this is the opening match of the season and both sides will have players who are new and still settling in. Pompey will have excellent support at Leeds so let’s see. Realistically, it would be good to come away with a point.

The move back to the Championship is huge for League One clubs, just look how Plymouth have struggled, but on the other hand how Ipswich succeeded. I hope and expect Pompey to end somewhere in between this season – safely in the middle of the table. I don’t expect us to end up being a yo-yo club such as Rotherham.

The re-signing of Matt Richie was a very pleasant surprise and I hope that his experience at this level together with that of Marlon Pack will inspire some of the younger players. I am fairly confident that Pompey have a reasonably robust defence that will make all of the difference in keeping us up. However, I am somewhat concerned that our front line might struggle, particularly with Colby Bishop’s medical condition. While it is nice to have a Danish player in the team again after such a long time, I don’t know anything about the proficiency of Elias Sørensen but wish him the best of luck.

Pompey have got a very tough start to the season and it will be interesting to see whether we have more than 10 points by the end of September. I have got tickets for West Brom and Sheffield United and am very much looking forward to seeing Pompey in action.

I am much relieved that nobody has tried to tempt our manager away. He was key to our successful promotion out of Leage One and will be so important to us staying up. I believe that many of Plymouth’s problems have been due to their changes in managers.

My early predictions are Leeds as champions, with Middlesbrough getting the second automatic promotion spot and Sunderland going up vial the play-offs.

At the other end of the table – Oxford bottom with Preston and maybe Plymouth going down. There is lots to look forward to this season and no “easy” matches. It is going to be hard to get used to Pompey not winning as frequently as in the past few seasons but enough to have a respectable finish.

It will take a couple of seasons to consolidate our position and the challenge for promotion again.

Play up Pompey

Michael

Michael Pantling til høyre.