Joseph Bailey

Central Defender - Portsmouth U18
8 Apr 2029
Sunday
Process

Marked for Joseph Bailey

108 Edition

The Portsmouth Post

21 Aug 2028
From our football correspondent Crisis

Boardroom

The scrutiny sharpens at Portsmouth

Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Portsmouth is running low.

Match

Portsmouth tear Peterborough United apart

Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Peterborough United, and it could have been more.

Player ratings

A brace, and Rio Ngumoha takes the afternoon — 8.06

There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Rio Ngumoha provided it, and the 8.06 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.

Player ratings

Age has not caught Josh Murphy yet — 8.03

At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.03 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.

Player ratings

Adrian Segecic runs at them all day

Successful dribbles: 24. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.

Squad

Real improvement from Yusuf Akhamrich at Portsmouth

Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Yusuf Akhamrich is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.

Squad

Tempers go at Portsmouth

John Swift was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.

Squad

A late step up for Colby Bishop

At 31 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 4 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.

Boardroom

Graduation day at Portsmouth

5 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.

In brief