First of all a mention for your absolutely magnificent travelling support, to take over 1200 fans with that distance is nothing short of astonishing.
I noticed a thread concerning George Hirst, how he can call himself a professional footballer is frankly beyond me, he made 31 Championship appearances for us last season mainly off the bench I grant you but he did absolutely zip all.
Pompey, especially early in the game did a lot of things right today & could & probably should have been at least a goal up before we scored but in the second half we were clinical & Pompey's defensive frailties showed & in the end we could have scored more.
The Cowley's need time to build something & I remain convinced they WILL eventually get it right. I understand the impatience but L1 & especially this season's L1 is a really hard division to get out of & we are only a dozen or so games in so as you guys say Play up Pompey.
At least we agree on some things.
1. Our defence is shite
2. Hirst is not a footballer
BradtheMiller, a good sensible response, thanks. Time will tell, but most people figured half way up would be Ok this season. DC has brought in some good signings/loans, Bazanu, Morrell in particular, and Raggett improves every month. Where we are lacking is up-front - Rotherham attached wave after wave with 4 forwards and it paid off. As others have said, we need to revert to f0ur at the back. If you have the likes of Whatmough, Clarke & Burgess you can play 3 at the back, but with Raggett plus two numpties at the back you can't. Azeez must surely play on Tuesday, nothing to lose. Curtis will be back, and Brown is not the same without Curtis up front.
(16-10-2021, 10:24 PM)BradtheMiller Wrote: [ -> ]First of all a mention for your absolutely magnificent travelling support, to take over 1200 fans with that distance is nothing short of astonishing.
I noticed a thread concerning George Hirst, how he can call himself a professional footballer is frankly beyond me, he made 31 Championship appearances for us last season mainly off the bench I grant you but he did absolutely zip all.
Pompey, especially early in the game did a lot of things right today & could & probably should have been at least a goal up before we scored but in the second half we were clinical & Pompey's defensive frailties showed & in the end we could have scored more.
The Cowley's need time to build something & I remain convinced they WILL eventually get it right. I understand the impatience but L1 & especially this season's L1 is a really hard division to get out of & we are only a dozen or so games in so as you guys say Play up Pompey.
It was great to visit Yorkshire for the weekend mate, it’s always a pleasure. Great place, great beer, friendly people. Thanks for the hospitality.
You mention our defensive frailties but it’s not the defence that worries me, rather our toothless attack. I agree that Hirst looks Sunday League at best and Marquis is a total waste of space at the moment.
I’d also like to mention Michael Smith, who showed exactly how a centre forward should play. I always rated him when he played for us, a view not shared by some of the football geniuses within our fan base.
Good luck to your lot mate, they look a tidy outfit and could do very well.
Hopefully when we play you again we’ll have some forwards worthy of the name.
Good post !
I didn’t travel but watched on iFollow and was struck by the way you got men forward so quickly when you had the ball, too many times our defence was overloaded by Rotherham shirts and mistakes came as a result. As the second half wore on, we were almost outnumbered in our own box.
The writing was on the wall as the first half came to an end I thought, we had played really well for 25 minutes and might and should have scored but didn’t, Smith took advantage of some slack marking and suddenly all our effort was undone.
Having got back into the game we handed you a gift which you took and then proceeded to over run us. The better team won comfortably on the day and will certainly contest the promotion places, I hope you can break the ‘too good for L1 not good enough for The Championship’ cycle this time round.
over and over again on the radio was the fact that Rotherham had 4 or 5 red shirts in the box for a cross. On the other hand, Marquis got the ball,laid it off then ran OUT of the box, Guy's been saying that at most away games now for a few seasons. Why is it so obvious to him and us but Marquis still makes life hard for himself and the crosser by moving away from the goalscoring zone?
Once Rotherham scored their second they overwhelmed us and beat us fair and square. Before then we had matched them.
However, I felt at the time that we didn't get the rub of the green leading up to both their second and third goals.
Before the second goal, we had a promising attack down the right, Romeo was in an offside position but didn't touch the ball while Freeman made an intelligent run from an onside position to break clear. In the EPL, the lino would have kept his flag down but yesterday the lino flagged for offside against Romeo.
For the third goal it was obvious that the freekick given against Marquis was taken from the wrong place. Just watched the replay and it was taken 10 yards further forward than the foul - a couple of groundsman-heavy-roller-lines closer to the goal. Had it been taken from the correct spot, the ball in would have lacked the angle to create the goal scoring opportunity.
Clutching at straws maybe, but fine margins can completely change how the rest of a game develops.
(17-10-2021, 09:26 PM)Pompey_in_Derby Wrote: [ -> ]Once Rotherham scored their second they overwhelmed us and beat us fair and square. Before then we had matched them.
However, I felt at the time that we didn't get the rub of the green leading up to both their second and third goals.
Before the second goal, we had a promising attack down the right, Romeo was in an offside position but didn't touch the ball while Freeman made an intelligent run from an onside position to break clear. In the EPL, the lino would have kept his flag down but yesterday the lino flagged for offside against Romeo.
For the third goal it was obvious that the freekick given against Marquis was taken from the wrong place. Just watched the replay and it was taken 10 yards further forward than the foul - a couple of groundsman-heavy-roller-lines closer to the goal. Had it been taken from the correct spot, the ball in would have lacked the angle to create the goal scoring opportunity.
Clutching at straws maybe, but fine margins can completely change how the rest of a game develops.
I agree that the margins are fine PID but the fact is we are toothless in attack and that was what killed us.
We had periods of the game when we had more of the ball but we never looked dangerous.
Hopefully we can rectify that for the visit if Ipswich.
We need to sort it and fast.
Having watched the "lowlights" earlier we played really well for the first 25 minutes & could have been 2-0 up. Slack marking gifted the Millers their 1st goal well taken. We then gotback into it early in the 2nd half & should have gone on from there but gave away a very sloppy 2nd Bazanu's mistake but the defenders should have saved his embarassment by clearing the ball. After that we were totally outplayed but could have got back into the game with better tactics & early subs. Unfortunately, DC is not tactically aware enough in the heat of the battle. A good Manager would have switched to a back 4 at Half - Time.
It does seem that we've switched from never scoring to never keeping a clean sheet.
It does seem difficult with a shortage of fit central defenders, but then we don't actually have many injured. Do we continue to chase games or do we sit deep for a few weeks and hit on the break?
It's ok it was a freak result, on the basis that the Sunderland win was a freak result, so no panic.
(18-10-2021, 06:49 PM)Hammie Wrote: [ -> ]It does seem that we've switched from never scoring to never keeping a clean sheet.
It does seem difficult with a shortage of fit central defenders, but then we don't actually have many injured. Do we continue to chase games or do we sit deep for a few weeks and hit on the break?
We've got two out of three centre backs injured, and if you count Ogilvie as a CB then at one stage we had 3 out 4 out.
Switching to three at the back coincided with starting to let goals in, it meant we started scoring but created a bigger problem at the back.
Time to abandon it now, at least until Robertson is fit (and his inury also coincides with when we started conceding)