Pompey face a tough trip to league leaders Chesterfield for their third televised match of the season tomorrow night.
Team News
Simon Ferry, Joe Devera and Ryan Taylor may have all recovered from their respective injuries and could feature but Andy Barcham's wife still hasn't given birth. Michael Drennan and Daniel Alfei will both be unavailable as they have been called up to the Ireland and Wales U-21 squads respectively.
Paul Cook is likely to name an unchanged side from the team that beat Cheltenham 4-1 on Tuesday night but Jay O'Shea is pushing for a recall.
The Match
The results this weekend couldn't have gone much better for Pompey with Torquay, Exeter, Bury and Accrington losing whilst Northampton, Bristol Rovers, Mansfield and Wycombe were all held to draws.
Those results that Pompey are now six points clear of the drop going into this game which is just as well seeing as there won't be many fans who believe that Richie Barker's men will get anything from this match.
The reason being that Chesterfield are a well balanced team that simply don't concede many goals and usually score plenty of them, although Wycombe did beat them 1-0 a couple of games ago. In Gary Roberts they probably have the best player in the division and also have plenty of players capable of scoring goals.
The task won't be helped by the fact that both Alfei and Drennan will be missing because they have international games in midweek. Had the game been played on Saturday then they would have been available to play. Thanks, Sky.
Alfei's absence means that Devera will probably come into the side at right back if he's fit. If not, Marcos Painter may end up playing there unless Danny East is ready to play again.
Hopefully Taylor will be fit to come back into the side and replace Drennan. If not, Barker may be tempted to play Jervis up front on his own again as he did at Scunthorpe and that didn't really work, did it?
In summary, it's a big ask for a team that have been struggling all season to go and get a result at the home of the best team in the league but this is a division where the old "anybody can beat anybody" cliché applies more than in any other league so this won't be a hopeless jaunt for those making the trip to Derbyshire tomorrow night.
Predicted Starting Line-Ups
Chesterfield
GK: Tommy LEE
RB: Tendayi DARIKWA
CB: Ian EVATT
CB: Liam COOPER
LB: Ritchie HUMPHREYS
DM: Sam MORSY
DM: Jimmy RYAN
RM: Gary ROBERTS
CM: Ollie BANKS
LM: Dan GARDNER
CF: Eoin DOYLE
Pompey
GK: Trevor CARSON
RB: Joe DEVERA
CB: Sonny BRADLEY
CB: Ben CHORLEY
LB: Nicky SHOREY
RM: Wes FOGDEN
CM: Toumani DIAGAROUGA
CM: Thery RACON
LM: Ricky HOLMES
CF: Jake JERVIS
CF: Ryan TAYLOR
Last Time: Chesterfield 0 Portsmouth 1 (Division Three - 18/12/1982)
A single Micky Tait goal was enough for Bobby Campbell's men to win this one as they continued their march to the Division Three title.
My Prediction
As much as I'd like to think that we could go up to the Proact Stadium and nick another 1-0 win I think the Spireites will have too much quality on the night.
Chesterfield 2 Portsmouth 0