Football Season Guide

Portsmouth go into another season in League as the bookies favourites for the League Two title. It has been the case for the last three years but have finished 13th and 16th respectively before a considerable improvement last season. As the biggest club in the division, with average attendances of more than 15,000, expectations are sky high on the South Coast and they brought in Paul Cook from Chesterfield in April 2015 to lead them to promotion. He had taken the Spireites to the League Two title in 2014 and made a host of changes last summer in an attempt to repeat the feat. The club were able to compensate for the blow of losing influential midfielder and leading goalscorer Jed Wallace to Wolverhampton Wanderers with the likes of winger Gary Roberts. No one was expecting it to be an easy ride however and that certainly proved to be the case. They briefly topped the table in October after making a good start to the season but despite having spent so much money last summer, Cook was forced to rely on a number of loan players, including strikers Caolan Lavery and Marc McNulty. They were unable to keep pace with the likes of Plymouth Argyle and eventual Champions Northampton Town and had to settle for a 6th place finish before conceding an injury-time winner to lose 1-0 to Plymouth Argyle in the second leg of a play-off semi-final and miss out on a trip to Wembley. The pressure and expectation on Paul Cook to deliver automatic promotion will only increase this time around and he has lost centre-back Adam Webster to Ipswich Town whilst surprisingly allowing full-back Ben Davies leave for Grimsby Town. He has strengthened his squad with the signings of full-back Drew Talbot, centre-back Tom Davies, midfielders Carl Baker and Milan Lalkboci and striker Curtis Main and they will be hoping this is the year they will begin to climb back up the leagues.