Richie Barker hopes that the festive fixtures will bring him his first win as Portsmouth manager after two dismal performances since he took charge.
Team News
Andy Barcham and Shaun Cooper are injury doubts after coming off at Bristol Rovers whilst Bondz N'Gala is suspended after picking up his fifth booking of the season during that defeat.
Dagenham boss Wayne Burnett may select an unchanged team from Saturday despite their loss to Torquay but Luke Wilkinson and Josh Scott are pushing for recalls.
The Match
When I was a kid, me and my friend both picked "obscure" non-league teams with "silly names" to "support" as kind of a friendly rivalry as you do when you're young. He picked Rushden and Diamonds, I picked Dagenham and Redbridge
Never in my mind back in those days did I ever expect the team I actually supported to play the Daggers in a league fixture, let alone have them installed as favourites for the game.
But alas, here we are at the end of 2013 and this "obscure" team from the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham may well never have a better chance of taking the scalp of the club that won the FA Cup five years ago.
The situation is truly dire at Pompey at the moment as the players are either not good enough or simply don't care. In some cases its both of those things so how on earth is the manager going to be able to orchestrate a win against a team defying all the low expectations of them this season?
With defenders missing it seems like Yassin Moutaouakil and Joe Devera will return to the back four which is a frightening thought, especially as Dagenham possess a nimble wing-forward in ex-Hammer Zavon Hines who has the potential to decimate the hapless Pompey backline.
Barker has another problem to solve as his team haven't scored since his arrival and haven't really looked like finding the net, either. How does he fix this? Perhaps, Romain Padovani should be given a start as he at least seems to possess some creativity that our other central midfielders lack.
Ricky Holmes has to start as he has been Pompey's most threatening player in recent games and Patrick Agyemang should be starting alongside David Connolly simply because Ryan Bird isn't up to League Two standard.
Whether the players will respond to their critics and actually put in a performance is up to them but all we can do is turn up and support them rather than verbally berate them, although the temptation to do that or simply not bother turning up is stronger than it has ever been.
No more excuses, Pompey. It's about time these players gave the fans, especially those who have sank their hard-earned money into saving their football club, something to cheer about and there's no better time to do that than the festive season.
Predicted Starting Line-Ups
Pompey
GK: Trevor CARSON
RB: Yassin MOUTAOUAKIL
CB: Sonny BRADLEY
CB: Joe DEVERA
LB: Marcos PAINTER
RM: Jed WALLACE
CM: Johnny ERTL
CM: Simon FERRY
LM: Ricky HOLMES
CF: Patrick AGYEMANG
CF: David CONNOLLY
Dagenham
GK: Chris LEWINGTON
RB: FEMI Ilesanmi
CB: Scott DOE
CB: Brian SAAH
LB: Gavin HOYTE
CM: Abu OGOGO
CM: Lawson D'ATH
CM: Luke HOWELL
RWF: Medy ELITO
LWF: Zavon HINES
CF: Rhys MURPHY
My Prediction
Having had the misfortune of watching Pompey's last two games I can only see another defeat coming here. Dagenham have lost their last two which may give fans a little hope but you would be silly to place any faith in our current crop of underperforming (or simply useless) players.
Portsmouth 1 Dagenham & Redbridge 2
Merry Christmas!