It's been well documented on this site before about how our luck with goalkeepers since the departure of Alan Knight is, shall we say, minimal. There are so many who have come and gone and always failed to hold their own, with the obvious odd man out being Shaka Hislop. What's more, when was the last time that a Pompey goalkeeper was a realistic contender for man of the match? Maybe it's just because it's a bit late at night but although I can remember our goalkeepers making the occasional good save, I can never remember (recently at least) one of our keepers playing a consistent blinder.
In fact, quite the opposite.
This season has been case in point. If you're a fan of any of the other ninety-one clubs in the football league, sometimes your keeper misjudges a cross or lets the ball slip under his foot. But nine times out of ten it still rolls narrowly wide, resulting in a gasp from the crowd but general relief. Not at Pompey however, where every mistake always ends up in the back of the net. Westerveld at Man City and West Brom, for example. Ashdown at Gillingham and Watford. Shaka at Charlton. Srnicek against Everton. Chalkias at Highbury.
In the meanwhile, let's think of goalkeepers who have made recent costly errors against Pompey. Well, there's Maik Taylor who got sent off for a handball outside the area in our 3-1 win in 2004. And Kelvin Davis completely messed up a back-pass in the promotion season. And... er... no, that really is it. (Although, as I've been reminded since writing this, the usually reliable Antti Niemi did have a complete mare against us).
And you know what's worse? I can think regularly of keepers who have played absolute blinders against us. Robert Green used to make a habit of turning up and going home with a bottle of champagne. Shay Given - who, as you might have expected, prompted this column - has always seemed to do well against us. Even usually dodgy keepers like David James and Thomas Sorenson seem to make the odd great save and don't concede too many against us.
Now obviously I'm not trying to pretend that we don't make it difficult for ourselves anyway with our piss-poor "attempts" on goal. But along with other things like training ground injuries with turn out to be catastrophic, some of the worst referees in the game, superb through balls that just bobble at the last minute and deflected goals that we concede with so much regularity, it just seems so often that these things only happen to us.
And yet speak to most fans of other football teams and they'll probably swear the same thing...