Alan Hansen’s Premier League Preview: Portsmouth v Everton
Rock-bottom Portsmouth’s miserable start to the season continued at Villa Park last weekend as they crashed to their 6th successive league defeat of 2009/10. This is already Pompey’s worst ever start to a league season but now they’ve become the only team in Premier League history to lose all of their opening 6 games of the season. You’d think things couldn’t get much worse but now they face an Everton side that seem to have recaptured their form after 3 successive wins in Europe, the league and the Carling Cup.
The stats continue to make worrying reading for Pompey fans. They’ve lost 10 of their last 12 league matches including the last seven in a row. They’ve failed to score in 9 of their last 12 league games and even lost their last three at Fratton Park. It’s hard to find a silver-lining for Paul Hart although it’s worth noting that Portsmouth did the league ‘double’ over Everton last season. Such has been the turnaround in personnel at Fratton Park that last season’s results don’t really count for much as this is an almost completely different side. Of the eleven players that started last season’s 2-1 home win over Everton back in March, only 4 remain.
There were signs against Aston Villa that the Portsmouth new boys were starting to gel. However, goal-scoring remains a major issue as does defending. If you are shipping goals and not scoring them, then that’s a major recipe for trouble. It will take the numerous new players a bit of time to settle but time is something Paul Hart’s Portsmouth don’t really have.
ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW
David Moyes will be pleased with his team’s last three performances after beating AEK Athens 4-0, Blackburn 3-0 and Hull 4-0. However, Everton have already surprisingly been beaten on both of their away league trips this season at Burnley and Fulham. Successive wins should have boosted confidence coupled with 3 much needed clean-sheets which ended their abysmal defensive start to the season which has seen them ship 10 goals in their first four matches. I’m sure new defensive recruits Johnny Heitinga and Sylvain Distin will prove to be good signings as both are vastly experienced. Distin will want to put on a performance against his old club and with the home side’s lack of firepower, he should have a relatively comfortable afternoon.
If you look through the Portsmouth side, even with their new signings, there doesn’t seem to be many goal scorers amongst the squad so I’m backing Everton to take all 3 points on Premier 10 as Pompey suffer a 7th Hart-breaking defeat of the new season.
Tags: Alan Hansen, Everton, Portsmouth, Premier 10, Premier League
