It must be tough being a Pompey fan at the moment. The days of big-spending under Harry Redknapp have gone, as has the gaffer, and the south-coast club are left with the kind of assortment of players that most teams would leave getting splinters on the bench.
Yes, they’re trying their best and Paul Hart seems to be dragging the most he can out of his side, but there’s a Championship whiff around Fratton Park at present and fans realise that for all their passion and volume, it’s going to be a long old season.
To be fair, that’s what most people suspected of Stoke both last season and this, but the Potters under the expert guidance of Tony Pulis, have confounded expectations, and despite unapologetically forming their squad with the aforementioned semblance of Championship-quality players, are playing some scintillating football that belies the true sum of the individual parts.
Much of that is down to the expert frontmanship of Ricardo Fuller. The Jamaican had a previous stint in the top division, coincidentally at Portsmouth, but failed to make the grade. Yet upon his second shot at the big time he is proving the perfect foil for Stoke’s expansive game, and has nudged in a few crucial strikes over the past 15 months in which time Stoke’s Premier League future has never really been called into serious doubt.
He plies his trade in a pair of Umbro Speciali Statement football boots, a decent, solid, unspectacular pair of football boots which promise age-old design, defined ball-striking, support, structure and delivery. It’s the kind of formula that was serving footballers one or two decades ago, and for a powerful ranging frontman such as Fuller the Umbro Speciali Statement football boots are the perfect tool of the trade.
In contrast his opposite number, Portsmouth’s Frederic Piquione, has found acclimatising to life in the best domestic league in the world a little more difficult. The man on loan from Lyon has scored only once in 10 league outings, but has spent time refining his game of late, and Pompey fans will tell you there is a semi-decent striker just waiting to burst out from below the surface.
As far as his choice of boots go the Martinique-born frontman plies his trade in a pair of Adidas F50i football boots. True, that sounds like a piece of NASA military aircraft, but these football boots have been hitting the high notes with those who favour lightweight, fast cleats.
The Adidas F50i football boots are brand new for the 2009/10 season with comfort first and foremost in mind, and one that’s built with a sole shock absorber in order to limit heel injury not to mention an added sockliner as part of the chassis. There’s even an Agion Anti-Bacterial compound to reduce whiff, and while the football boots as a whole, don’t scream catwalk style or science lab technology, as the winter months draw in, isn’t comfort and warmth a little bit more relevant?
Ransacker Prediction: It’s a battle of old versus in one of three Premier League games on Sunday. These are good cleats – who comes out on top should be the striker in the best form, because both of these football boots can give any hungry hitman the best sole platform on which to form his game. Should be a cracker…
