Pompey match thread.

[nuttytimmy]

Conclusions. Abe and Nuge bright, Wellens and King MIA.

[seenitall]

Beckford looked good, King seemed to start playing after Wellens went off, the fact that King and DAnns went forward immediately took the pressure off the defence. It will take Pearson a while to get the side how he wants it, he must have seen some promising stuff today- you lot are too negative and impatient. I remember 3 or 4 seasons playing like this under David Pleat. Colin Gordon anyone?

[seenitall]

Watching their goal, Bamba fails to step forward leaving the other 3 defenders too far out (and looking surprised that he is still playing the Pompey lad onside). No doubt it will be Mills fault though. Strong finish by their striker though.

[Guest bennytwohats]

Beckford looked good, King seemed to start playing after Wellens went off, the fact that King and DAnns went forward immediately took the pressure off the defence. It will take Pearson a while to get the side how he wants it, he must have seen some promising stuff today- you lot are too negative and impatient. I remember 3 or 4 seasons playing like this under David Pleat. Colin Gordon anyone?

That was woeful. Not a lot of positives to draw from that. We seem to be moving backwards to me. We were putting in better performances than that at the start of the season.

[inckley fox]

Not sure why anyone's getting excited over Abe. I thought he was weak in the challenge and completely failed to protect the two centre backs; lost count of the times they were three on two or four on three against our defence. He gave the ball away in crucial areas (eg his late 40 yard effort which ended in a chance for them).

I respect Pearson inviting players to 'play their own game', but someone needs to tell Bamba what to do. He covers the whole pitch, but does nothing particularly well. He doesn't understand what off-side is and we get repeatedly caught out when he's going forward.

A lot of people have been saying that there's no lack of effort, but I saw Gallagher, Peltier and Abe all backing out of several 50/50s. We were asleep at the start of the game again. The movement was terrible. Forget Pearson, some of them simply don't seem to want to play for the club.

I like people saying that Gallagher would be notching up assists with other clubs. There's some truth in this, but we have four (I think) 6 foot+ players and can't pick them out often enough. The deliveries are good but completely predictable.

Above all what I noticed was the type of 'bad' our performance was. There's low-on-confidence bad (eg O'Neill early on, Bassett-era City, Sousa-era City) and there's comically bad (Brian Carey, Tony Spearing, Michael Trotter, Colin Gordon). There was a moment in today's game, most probably involving Bamba or Konchesky, when it occurred to me that we look more 'comically bad' than 'despondently bad'. It felt like watching eleven Jamie Claphams.

[Webbo]

Not sure why anyone's getting excited over Abe. I thought he was weak in the challenge and completely failed to protect the two centre backs; lost count of the times they were three on two or four on three against our defence. He gave the ball away in crucial areas (eg his late 40 yard effort which ended in a chance for them).

Agreed, he was nothing special.