Portsmouth (2023)
I didn’t know whether to include this because when I came away from the game, I felt a sense of calm. Looking back, I think it hurt more than I let on.
2023/24 was not a great season. Mark Kennedy had a formula, but not the means to carry it out. We were solid at the back but uninspiring up top, partly due to personnel, partly due to a Tuchel-style tendency to hold on to a 1-0 lead. If we went 1-0 down, forget about it.
When Michael Skubala came in, we fizzed. It took time, but we went off with big wins against Cambridge (6-0), Barnsley (5-1) and Bristol Rovers (5-0). The play-offs looked impossible until, with a single game to go, we were in the top six. We were 90 minutes from entering the play-offs as the form team nobody wanted to play.
Danny Mandroiu’s missed penalty cost us. If he had scored that, Pompey, already crowned as Champions, would likely have been beaten. Instead, a poor penalty kept the score 0-0, and the table-topping side scored twice. The second saw applause break out in the home end, not at them, but at our brave efforts to climb the table.
The pain came after. Oxford, weaker than us, snuck into the top six and were promoted. That could have been us. At the time, because the rise had been unexpected, we probably didn’t appreciate that falling at the last hurdle hurt quite as much as it did.
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