Baggies look for a hat-trick win against Pompey

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·22 August 2025

Baggies look for a hat-trick win against Pompey

West Bromwich Albion v Portsmouth; The Hawthorns, Saturday 23rd August 2025, 3pm

The Baggies welcome Portsmouth to the Hawthorns on Saturday afternoon looking for a third straight win to open their league campaign. That has only happened three times in the club’s history with the most recent being in 1997 when Ray Harford’s team made it three from three thanks to a 1-0 win over Wolves made possible by Keith Curle’s memorable own goal.

John Mousinho’s team finished last season with a five match unbeaten run and opened this campaign with an encouraging 1-0 win away to Oxford United. Since then, however, they were beaten 2-1 at home in the Carabao Cup by League One Reading and following that up with another 2-1 home defeat to Norwich City last weekend.

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Baggies fans’ eyes may well be on John Swift who left the Hawthorns on a free transfer in the summer and has moved to Fratton Park. He has started all three games for Pompey this season but, apart from hitting the bar with a long range shot last weekend, his only real mark on the games has been a yellow card in each of his Championship appearances. I’d expect a third on Saturday as he will obviously feel he has something to prove.

Highly rated Australian forward, Adrian Segečić, is probably the stand out signing from the rest of Pompey’s summer additions and he has started well having scored both of their league goals and assisted their strike in the Carabao Cup. He made the move from Sydney FC for an undisclosed fee having performed well in recent seasons and making the ASEAN All-Stars team for a match against Manchester United in May. Márk Kosznovszky and Luke Le Roux joined from MTK Budapest and IFK Värnamo respectively to bolster the midfield options while ex-Posh defender Josh Knight has also joined after a spell with Hannover. Winger, Yang Min-hyeok, has also joined on loan from Spurs having spent the second half of last season at QPR.

Ryan Mason has no new faces to consider since the win at Wrexham last week, although I’m sure he is hoping for one or two more before the window closes in a week or so. He does, however, have some decisions to make given that his substitutes made an immediate impact at the Racecourse Ground last weekend and will be pushing for a start. Furthermore, Tom Collyer will have had a little more time to settle in to the club and may, himself, be hoping to be used from the first whistle. Of course, there is an adage that you shouldn’t change a winning team, but when the team weren’t winning before substitutions, it doesn’t really hold up.

Mason will have his own thoughts, of course, and he has suggested, in interviews, that he will tend to tailor his side and style of play to the opposition. What that means for Portsmouth is anybody’s guess, but based on his record so far, we have every right to be optimistic.

History

There have been a few huge games between the Baggies and Pompey in my time as an Albion fan, not least the Great Escape conclusion in 2005, the win at Fratton Park that kept us in the second tier in 1994 and, of course, the painful FA Cup Semi-Final defeat at Wembley in 2008, but there is one other game that also sticks out for me as it was something of an outlier.

The 2001/02 campaign will be remembered as Albion’s first promotion to the Premier League, returning to the top flight after an absence of 16 years, but also a season when 1-0 to the Albion became the norm. The Baggies scored just 61 goals in 46 league games, but an excellent defence that conceded just 29 goals, a divisional record that stood until it was bettered by Burnley last season, helped Albion to beat Wolves to second place. When Pompey visited the Hawthorns that season, however, it was a bit different.

Having started the campaign well, Graham Rix’s Portsmouth arrived in Sandwell in February 2002 on the crest of a slump having won just two of their previous thirteen matches, a run that included a humiliating 4-1 home defeat to fourth tier Leyton Orient in the FA Cup. Albion had just been beaten away to promotion rivals Millwall and sat in fourth place, one place below the Lions and four points off the automatic promotion places.

Jason Roberts, who had missed most of the season through injury, partnered Scott Dobie in attack and they combined early on to open the scoring with Roberts scoring his sixth goal of the season from close range. Midway through the first half, a short corner led to a fierce strike from Neil Clement from the edge of the box that was well saved by Dave Beasant in the Pompey goal, he also kept out the rebound effort from Dobie but Lárus Sigurðsson was on hand to finish high into the net for what was his first goal for the club, and his first for anyone for 2½ years.

Seven minutes before the break, it was 3-0. Derek McInnes floated a ball over the top for Igor Bališ to run onto – he committed the goalkeeper before squaring to Scott Dobie to find the empty net. Dobie, who had come in from Carlisle United at the start of the season with few expectations, had turned into a goal machine following Roberts’ injury scoring nine goals before the end of September. However, this was his first goal since then. On the stroke of half time, Igor Bališ intercepted a loose pass in midfield, played a one-two with Roberts before running clear and producing a consummate chipped finish over Beasant that belied the fact that it was his first goal in English football – his second would be that penalty at Valley Parade a couple of months later.

So, 4-0 at half time was something of an unusual position and, as often happens when a match is effectively won before the break, the second half was something of an anti-climax but, ten minutes from time, the hosts did score their fifth to ensure it was their biggest win of the season. This time, it was Andy Johnson with the clipped ball over the top to send Jason Roberts through – he rounded Beasant to finish from a tight angle. It would be his last goal of the season as he once again succumbed to injury after the next match, a 1-0 defeat at Preston North End.

Despite losing Roberts, that loss at Deepdale would be the last league defeat of the season for Albion as they won eight of the remaining ten games to overtake Wolves and win automatic promotion.

For Portsmouth, Rix was sacked a month later to be replaced by Harry Redknapp who would guide them to the Division One title the following season.