How close Portsmouth are to becoming serious promotion contenders

The Blues boss feels his promotion chasers are now near to finding the perfect balance of defensive steel and attacking cutting edge.

And three fixtures on the bounce at Fratton Park over the next eight days, could go another giant step towards his side showing they are real contenders for automatic promotion.

Pompey start the weekend in sixth place - four points off current leaders Peterborough, and with a single point spanning the sides from third to seventh.

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The form of Jackett’s side shows their consistency with no sides garnering more League One points over the past 12 months.

Pompey also top the away form table this term, with just their return at Fratton Park letting them down so far.

That’s a challenge they now have to bridge as their season gathers pace.

Jackett said: ‘We know optimism and how things look can change from game to game.

‘But you’re looking at the league table and the points total and we’re there or thereabouts, which is good - very good.

‘We want to maintain and see if we can improve, though.

‘As the season goes on we want to produce the consistency to keep us up there.

‘We’ve played pretty well. We’ve looked, at the right time, like we can create and score goals and not bad at the back.

‘I do think there’s some promise and optimism in our performances.

‘We’ve had to change things around a bit in the past couple of games, but that happens.

‘We have to keep working and then hope things settle down for us.

‘But a lot of our performances have been very good, which is encouraging in this early part of the season.’

Jackett looks likely to keep his opponents guessing when it comes to his approach over the coming weeks, as he aims to build on promising form.

There was plenty of debate about the system used at Plymouth on Monday night, though the Pompey boss was clear he played a 4-4-2 formation throughout.

Jackett has used a 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 and 3-4-3 set-ups at times this season, too.

He added: ‘The two half-time subs was a change in personnel on Monday, but we didn’t change the shape.

‘It was Harrison and Marquis up front second half, Harness one side and Williams the other.

‘Within that two lines of four, there’s a time when you need forwards wide and there’s other times where you need midfield players there.

‘Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got some quite natural players in that position as well, but with one or two of them who we can use there unavailable it may be forwards at some times

or midfielders who go in those particular slots.

‘Then what you do with the front two is either have two going long or one going slightly short.

‘We had quite a settled side for a while, really.

‘Then with the injury to Jacobs and international call-up to Ronan Curtis, we’ve been left slightly unbalanced on the left at times.

‘But you have to get over those things and get on with it. We’re not the only club that happens to.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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