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\n A full look ahead at Pompey’s next WSL 2 fixture at St Andrew’s, including a closer look at the opponents.\n <\/p>\n
Off the back of successive victories in WSL 2 over Crystal Palace at Westleigh Park and Sunderland away from home most recently, Pompey go into this next round of fixtures, matchday number 9, against Birmingham City at St Andrew\u2019s.<\/p>\n
Jessie Gale (90+4′) and Meg Hornby (90+8′) combined to score late on at the Eppleton Colliery Welfare Ground last Sunday, handing the Blues a third league win of the campaign after 8 games – The same amount they managed to achieve after all 20 fixtures last term.<\/p>\n
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THIS WEEK’S OPPOSITION:<\/p>\n
MANAGER<\/p>\n
Birmingham City are led by 31-year-old Amy Merricks, who joined the club on a 3-year contract last April.<\/p>\n
Prior to her move to Birmingham, Merricks was England Women\u2019s Under-19s head coach and between April-November 2023, helped the Young Lionesses secure qualification for the Second Round of the 2024 UEFA Women\u2019s Under-19 EUROs, winning all 3 of their Round One fixtures.<\/p>\n
Prior to her time in the national team setup, she spent 8 years working at Brighton & Albion, 5 of which were under the mentorship of Birmingham technical director Hope Powell.<\/p>\n
With Brighton, she was thrice interim manager and on the last of these occasions was the Barclays Women\u2019s Super League\u2019s youngest-serving boss.<\/p>\n
On the South Coast with Brighton, armed with experience from Millwall and Gillingham, as well as a League Manager\u2019s Association Diploma in Football Management, she was originally appointed as development squad head coach and promoted to first team assistant manager a year later.<\/p>\n
Merricks holds a UEFA Pro License.<\/p>\n
ONE TO WATCH<\/p>\n
Ever-present forward Christie Harrison-Murray is our one to watch this weekend.<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old is an attacking midfielder and also the captain of Birmingham City.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s claimed 1 goal and 2 assists so far this campaign and wears the number 10 shirt.<\/p>\n
TOP SCORER<\/p>\n
As it stands, Birmingham have 2 players locked as their top goalscorer in WSL 2.<\/p>\n
After 8 fixtures, both 27-year-old forward Veatriki Sarri from Greece, and also Batcheba Louis from Haiti, have claimed 4 goals each.<\/p>\n
Sarri has 1 assist while Louis has 0.<\/p>\n
Their closest competitor within the squad is English forward Lily Crosthwaite – The 23-year-old has 3 goals to her name so far this campaign.<\/p>\n
CURRENT FORM<\/p>\n
Amy Merricks\u2019 Blues go into this weekend\u2019s fixtures in 2nd place in WSL 2, after 5 victories, 1 draw and 2 defeats so far from their opening 8 games.<\/p>\n
They have 16 points on the board – 4 adrift of league leaders Charlton Athletic.<\/p>\n
Their previous 2 results have produced 1 defeat and 1 win – A 1-0 loss at home to Charlton before a 3-0 victory over newly-promoted Nottingham Forest away from home.<\/p>\n
The last time these 2 sides met was back on the 19th of January at Westleigh Park, where Birmingham City came away with a 3-1 victory.<\/p>\n
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JAY SADLER’S THOUGHTS:<\/p>\n
Ahead of Sunday’s match at St Andrew’s, Express FM’s Jake Smith sat down with Pompey head coach Jay Sadler on Friday night’s episode of The Football Hour – You can listen back to the full interview below…<\/p>\n
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Jake will be back on Monday (November 17th) night from 6pm with full reaction to this match when The Football Hour returns with 2 more Blues fans alongside him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A full look ahead at Pompey’s next WSL 2 fixture at St Andrew’s, including a closer look at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7820],"tags":[147195,855,748,5554,393,147190,94,4884,147191,3462,147197,147198,147192,35554,147193,147196,16,15,147194],"class_list":{"0":"post-571774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-birmingham","8":"tag-advertising-portsmouth","9":"tag-birmingham","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-community","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-express-fm-radio","14":"tag-football","15":"tag-great-britain","16":"tag-hampshire-music","17":"tag-local","18":"tag-marketing-portsmouth","19":"tag-passionately-portsmouth","20":"tag-pompey","21":"tag-portsmouth","22":"tag-portsmouth-news","23":"tag-radio-advertising-portsmouth","24":"tag-uk","25":"tag-united-kingdom","26":"tag-volunteer-radio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115553108841586629","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}