Ipswich or Portsmouth? Rotherham or Peterborough? How about Lincoln or Coventry? It’s your choice

Last season our punters got it more or less right and correctly predicted most of the top six. Luton were missed but that was mainly down to the Coventry Ninjas, whose hijack of last year’s poll pushed them (Luton) out of the top places.

Maybe the ninjas or another club’s fans will do the same again this season. As far as I’m aware the polldaddy vulnerability that allowed multiple voting still exists and all I can do is disable the ability of readers to see the results in real time. That might change how the poll coding works (it’s built-in and can’t be changed) but it takes something away. A pity, but there we go.

I’ve got a lot on for the next few weeks so I won’t be conjuring up a novel method of tracking and displaying our chosen clubs’ progress or the lack of it. All I’ll be doing is monitoring the accretion of points for now, though I might come up with something different later in the season.

As always, your comments are welcome. We hold posts for moderation but they do go up eventually, subject to meeting commonsense rules of decency, manners, libel etc.

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From MK Dons to Rochdale via Oxford, Peterborough and Portsmouth: it’s a short financial ramble

It was on 18th June that I put up the first in this series, covering the League One clubs beginning A-L, apart from Bury, Blackpool and Bolton. This, part two, was intended to cover the back end of the alphabet but, at 2,300 words, ended up far too big for a single webpage.

There was only one answer. I had to split the piece and cover only five clubs, meaning there will be a part three for the last five and part four for the Lancashire Bs and Sunderland. These will arrive at some yet undetermined point in the future, bet you can’t wait.

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Sunderland bound for Wembley with nothing to fear from Charlton

Jake and and Jack capture the moment

Who would have thought? Wembley not once but twice and in the same season.

Monsieur Salut is old enough to have been at the famous Bob Stokoe/Jimmy Montgomery/Ian Porterfield FA Cup final on May 5 1973. Sadly, the promised ticket didn’t materialise so the game was watched with plenty of beer to hand in a first-floor flat in Uxbridge.

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Portsmouth vs Sunderland: crunch time at Fratton Park with Charlton looking set for the final

Jake: ´Pompey yet again – but by far the most important of the five times we’ve met this season’


Talk about doing it the hard way
.

We knew the playoffs would be tough and that is how it is turning out, at least for us.

To no great surprise, we take a narrow lead to Portsmouth while Charlton grabbed a straightforward 2-1 win at Doncaster – forget the away goals, or absence of them, since these do not count in the EFL playoffs – and the finalists will be known by the end of this week. Our game is first up, on Thursday night, with Charlton completing what ought to be a formality 24 hours later.

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Sixer’s play off Sevens: Sunderland 1 Portsmouth 0, featuring The Return of the King

A moral victory as well as an actual one, will that single goal be enough? That’s not a question I’m going to answer here as I don’t want to jinx a team that had more than enough bad luck in the first leg. It must be said the first 20 minutes were not good, but then we grew into the game and were dominant until an excellent substitution by Jack Ross was negated by a very poor refereeing deision

Pete Sixsmith will be doing a full report in due course, unless Malcolm subs for him, and will no doubt fulminate at length on that decision. For now he has but seven words with which to describe the game

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Sunderland vs Portsmouth: round one in the battle to face Doncaster or Charlton



A quick glance at our fellow-contenders
for promotion via the playoffs shows we have Wembley previous against two of the three – and it’s not encouraging. Portsmouth beat us there in the Checkatrade Trophy final in March and plenty of us will never forget the anguish of 1998 against Charlton.

So if hoodoos exist, they need to be broken. Here’s your chance to say whether and how we’ll make a start on Saturday night.

Act Four

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Sixer’s Portsmouth Soapbox: play offs Pompey, Pompey play offs – and us

Malcolm Dawson writes……whilst not mathematically denying us one of the two automatic promotion spots, yesterday’s result finally extinguished any realistic hope of avoiding the lottery that is the play-offs. At the start of the season I don’t suppose there are many supporters who would have said that only losing a total of three games out of 44, two by the odd goal and one after having a man sent off early doors, would be considered a failure but there are plenty of brickbats being thrown around in the wake of our 19th draw of the season. 

A draw was really of no use to either side (although Portsmouth might still get an automatic promotion spot if they can win their last two games and either Barnsley or Luton fail to get maximum points next Saturday) so I was surprised that Pompey weren’t more adventurous in their play and that they were prepared to indulge in a lot of the time wasting tactics that seem prevalent in this division and having succeeded in getting Glenn Loovens sent off at Fratton Park, seemed to be trying the same trick, this time with Aiden McGeady one of their prime targets.

Eppleton Colliery Banner

Some pundit or other was saying on the radio how successful Tottenham’s season has been so far and this is a side that has lost 12 times from 36 games. The ease with which social media allows instant reaction will no doubt be rife with those quick to point out how dreadful this result was towards the end of what to them has been a dreadful season. But those taking a more thoughtful and objective view will be of the opinion that our disappointment stems from hope and expectation. Some of us hoped we might go straight back up whilst others expected us to run away with the division. Games we might have expected to have won have seen us drop points and while our record might have seen us finishing in the top two most seasons, this year the form of Barnsley, Luton and Portsmouth have meant it hasn’t. That Spurs record shows 12 defeats but only 1 draw and dropping points at home to the likes of Shrewsbury, Wycombe, Accrington Stanley, Oxford and Fleetwood as well as a failure to hold on to leads at Wycombe, Oxford and Scunthorpe have ultimately cost us a top spot. 

What I haven’t been disappointed with this season, is the effort and commitment to the club that team have shown, even if they haven’t often been dominant in games and haven’t always been able to get all three points. Unlike some I can’t fault the attitude. But the big success for me, whether we go up or not is the efforts the club has gone to reconnect with the supporters and after years of being treated like a customer with my support less valued by the club than by my local supermarkets, I once again feel a part of the SAFC community. The parade of miners’ banners, one of which was from Eppleton where my dad worked most of his life and which dominated the view from my bedroom window when I was growing up, yet another example of how the ownership is trying to re-engage with fans and whilst there will be sound economic reasons for them doing so, I am pleased to see it.

Anyway, my introduction seems to be almost as long as Pete Sixsmith’s match report. He was less than complimentary about our opponents on the way home last night. Has he tempered his views after a night’s kip? Let’s find out.

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Sixer’s Sevens: Portsmouth do enough and it looks like the playoffs for Sunderland

For a short while it was looking good. We were winnng and Barnsley were losing. Then it all turned round  and, despite Luton’s loss, we didn’t do enough. Theoretically, we could still finish top but we know it won’t happen. More likely, we’ll be up against Charlton in the playoffs.

I think it’s Pete Sixsmith‘s turn to do tomorrow’s match report but I could be wrong. It’s definitely his text, though, and if you count the words you’ll see a little bit of symbology. Just like Sunderland, he’s come up a little bit short:

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