|
The Pompey boss is spot on when he says the Blues have no obligation to other teams, nor to the Premier League. But his comments have got some of the national press boys excited as they make up stories that Pompey could be hit by further penalties if they put out under-strength sides.
It will certainly be interesting to see what more the Premier League can do to a team who have already been relegated by their rules, and who won’t be part of their elite next season.
Perhaps they’d issue a big fine as they did to Wolves when they fielded a weakened team against Manchester United – or perhaps they’d do nothing, as when Manchester United did the same against, funnily enough, Hull on the last day of 2008-09.
Anyway, forget all this tosh – what about the matter in hand, Pompey v Hull, a rare 3pm Saturday kick-off at Fratton in which the Blues will be out to show they can still fight and Phil Brown’s replacement Dowie will aim to set about proving he’s not just a pretty face.
As Pompey club captain Michael Brown explained, the Blues still have pride to play for and fans to play for – even if this week’s nine-point deduction leaves them needing to win pretty much each one of their final nine games.
‘We will try to win the game, for sure. We have to be positive and give it our best shot,’ he said. ‘The nine-point deduction has come in now, which had been dragging on and we had sort of been waiting for it.
‘We are all very disappointed with that, but we have to go on now and win as many games as we can. We have to move on. It is about ourselves - we are here to play for Portsmouth. The supporters are going to be paying their money, and we will be trying to beat Hull.’
It’s the sort of outlook Pompey fans want to hear, yet they will also, in the main, be fully behind Grant when he talks of priorities changing after the points deduction.
The FA Cup semi-final is just three weeks away and if there are key players with niggles – David James among them with a recurrence of his calf injury - why should they be risked in league games? ‘You need to give all of the teams an equal chance, which we did not have in this case,’ said Grant.
‘We tried everything in the last month to keep what I think the spirit of football is about. I do not see any reason why we should not do that even when we do not have a target.’
What chance, then, Pompey’s biggest win of the season so far, or something like it?
|
