Tal Ben Haim was the pick of the bunch for me, and represents a good replacement for Sylvain Distin. I must admit to not knowing a lot about Kevin Prince Boateng, but I’ve always liked O’Hara, and (I say this through gritted teeth) Michael Brown made a good debut aginst Man City at the weekend. In terms of outgoings, I honestly can’t argue with any of them. If players do not want to be at the club, there is no point in keeping them. The way Kranjcar has played recently, he won’t be missed anyway. I also happen to think he is over-rated in any case. Distin has no international career to pursue, but I suppose at his age, you have to take any attractive opportunitie that come your way. The bottom line is, with what has been happening at the club recently, no player could be blamed for wanting to pursue a career elsewhere.

The exception to all this, of course, is David James. No doubt he would also have gone if a bid had come in, but he is the one player who could probably recover form that. He is also the one we most needed to stay. His presence will be essential if we are to be competitive from now on. He will need to get his head back together, but he will have no choice. His World Cup place depends on it, but a goalkeeper can maintain his form in a struggling side in a way an outfield player can’t.

It’s up front where I am most worried. I feel rather than spending £2m on a Championship central defender, Paul Hart should have been busting a gut to acquire another striker instead. We have Hreidarsson and Wilson who can play at the back as well as Kaboul and Ban Haim. Up front we have Piquionne, Smith, and Dindane. I’m not convinced by Smith but am much happier to have him than the incompetent Nugent, who signed off with another howler aginst City. We have obviously not seen Dindane yet, but I just have a horrible feeling he is going to be injury prone. This is not based on fact of any sort, and I hope I am wrong. Just a hunch. We also have the indefatigable Kanu, who has just signed a new one year deal. We may just be needing him more than last season, although he looked good against City. But he must be in his forties now! I just have this nagging feeling that it is scoring goals which is going to be our achilles heel, even after the transfer window. Didn’t we try and get Benjani?

Anyway, at least the Pompey faithful are now hopeful that we can now get our season off the ground against Bolton in ten days’ time. That’s more than we could imagine a week ago, but it’s still going to be an uphill battle. If we can make a decent fist of it, though, it should be a more emjoyable season than the last one!