Two years ago on this day Pompey travelled to Villa Park and played in one of the worst games of football I have ever seen. Milan Baros scored the only goal in a dire game and after the final whistle the league table looked like this with ten games to go:
17th: West Brom - 26pts
18th: Birmingham - 23pts
19th: Portsmouth - 18pts
20th: Sunderland - 10pts
That's it. A whopping eighteen points from 28 games played of which 18 of them defeats and just a measly four wins. To put that into perspective it had only taken us ten games to reach that total this season.
The progress we have made in the short time we have been in the Premier League is astonishing. We were beaten by the better side on Sunday but then Everton have been in the Premier League since its inception and only in these last few years have they managed to sustain a challenge for European football.
The same could be said for Tottenham, Aston Villa and Man City too. In fact, only Reading have less experience in the Premier League than Pompey do and yet we're having a much more successful season than the likes of Newcastle and despite the defeat on Sunday we still have a chance of qualifying for Europe.
It has taken the top flight mainstays over thirteen years to reach the standard they are currently at, yet we have are close to matching that in just five years. Of course, I'm not naive enough to think that we will progress every season as it only takes one bad year to screw things up.
However, the bottom line is that we're having the best times that most of our fans remember and that it will take time to build on our current success. There will always be moaners but you only have to think back two years to remember much worse situtaions than this current difficult time of being 9th in the top flight and in the FA Cup Quarter-Finals.