SkyDaz Banter: Pre-Pompey

Last updated : 19 February 2004 By Darren Porter

The Sky Sports Monday Night Football Special between Leicester and Leeds was a cracker. The presenters were the old Blues favourite Steve Claridge, rooting for Leicester, and anchorman Ian Payne who is a follower of Leeds. The two Fanzone commentators joined the invited crowd pre match for the usual banter and chitchat. The Leeds fan set himself up for a real fall by wearing a t shirt inscribed on the back with a message about Leeds storming into town, how they were going to batter poor old Leicester and his score prediction of Leicester 0 Leeds 4.

I don’t know about you lot but when a game takes place that doesn’t involve the Blues I select a team I want to win purely for the purposes of cheering someone on. This selection can be determined by any number of factors, ex Blues players, once met a girl from that town (ahem!), they play in blue etc. Prior to arriving at the studio I had decided to support Leeds purely because Alan Smith is in my Fantasy Football team! Upon seeing the cocky Leeds fan with his outrageously confident t-shirt the whole of the Monday Night team started supporting Leicester. We cheered every goal and to be honest Leicester could have had ten, Leeds were appalling. Poor Ian Payne sat amongst us to watch the game and endured ninety minutes of ridicule. The Leeds fan was duly slaughtered upon his return to the main studio after the match and the Leicester fan took great delight in using a black marker pen to amend the scoreline on the back of his lily-white shirt. Leeds’s delusions of grandeur hit the ground with a bang. Roque Junior looked like he hadn’t recovered from fighting Apollo Creed. Hopefully the Blues have also taken advantage of Leeds’s disarray by the time you read this or I could be feeling as daft as their much-subdued fan.


I watched the game in the studio and made sure I sat next to the
Newcastle supporter who not only had to suffer taunting about our away win but also stared in disbelief as his team sank into the bottom three. Obviously it is too early in the season to read much into the league table but I can tell you that the rest of the Premiership fans have started to be wary and fear Birmingham City and they all think we are going to finish in the top half. We are not going to play as bad as we did against Fulham very often but that game showed us to be careful of over confidence. There are no bad teams in the Premiership, except maybe Wolves!

Article reproduced with kind permission of the BCFC official matchday programme.