Match Day Thread Pompey vs Rotherham

Pompey have been utterly toothless this whole game. The times we've had the ball in dangerous position we've failed to even get it between the posts. It's not good enough.

 

Rotherham are wasting time and get a card for it.

 

Burgess has to stop playing long balls. He's bad at it and always gives it away.

 

Absolutely pathetic performance against a side with an atrocious away record. What a waste of time watching that.

 

A really dissapointing performance from Pompey today. As I said at halftime, the foundations of a good team are there but it's not coming together yet. What's dissapointing most today was how Pompey found it impossible to hit the ball anywhere near the goal. I never felt like Rotherham were in any kind of danger of conceeding, especially after Hawkins went off. There is a lot of work to be done to make this Pompey team a strong League One side but, after today's performance, the immediate focus has to be some shooting practice.

 

And heading practice.

 

Got to admit that I thought that the momentum would have been with Portsmouth this season. I think that Division One is a funny league and when Saints were playing there, it really seemed like there were teams who seemed to be better suited to the Championship and others who looked like they should have been playing in League Two. There didn't seem to be much of a middle ground.

The appointment of Kenny Jackett appeared to be an improvement on Paul Cook and I would not have been surprised to have found Portsmouth looking for a play off position. The reality has been somewhat different. A number of players have been moved on and Jackett has added to the squad. Watching the football on Channel 5, the league now looks harder than I had imagined and I am wondering how many Portsmouth fans think that this season will be a struggle. Looking at the quality of other teams in the league, a second promotion looks well-beyond PFC but you will need to pick up some points if you are to establish yourself. I've only seen match highlights and listened to some of the commentaries so cannot comment. However, as an outsider, I think you are finding this league harder than you might have imagined. This afternoon's Solent phone in will be interesting.

 

I think Ian that we're all expecting this season to be harder, top half will be a good result for most of us.

 

I always expected this season to be a battle against relegation and nothing more, as I laid out here in the last post of that page: https://www.not606.com/threads/majrs-all-purpose-pompey-thoughts-thread.258591/page-3

 

Yes, but I was hoping for more than one win in a month's worth of football.

 

MAJR

Thanks for posting the link to the really interesting and detailed thread. I must admit that I had not appreciated the turnover of playing staff at Portsmouth. The level is really quite incredible and would be remarkable even for a non-league side. I appreciate that the original players had to be signed with a minimal amount of expenditure and therefore well understand why the players would have moved around but the recent levels are staggering.

 

Is Hawkins really that much better than Kabamba, who has gone to Colchester. I hope Kabamba scores a bucket load of goals, comes back in January and manages to secure a first team place ahead of a lumbering 1.90m centre forward that is Hawkins!

 

And I hope and pray that Lowe finds his scoring boots and head in the coming weeks.

 

Majr good honest commentary and I was glad I couldn't make it today - I travel a long way to watch and this sounded like very poor fayre indeed. Ian T - as 3rd eye said I think the realists amongst thought a mid table consolidation would be just great. I have no idea who Rotheram kept after dropping out of the Champ but hoped we'd beat them today. I think it will be harder than perhaps we did expect but I won't be really passing any judgement till we hit mid October.

 

To play devils advocate, I think where Hawkins is a tall guy and was stooping it might not have looked so bad to the ref in the heat of the moment, but the Rotherham player has clearly leapt off the ground and has his foot well above head height and he caught Hawkins and caused a gash across his forehead which eventually was the reason he was withdrawn from play (concerns about a head injury prompting the sub).

There's no way I dont consider this foul, and anywhere else the pitch it would have been given without question,but for some reason refs are more forgiving in the penalty area and if this is anything to go by: http://asktheref.com/Soccer Rules/Question/23688/ then the rules dont seem to be that clear cut about incidents like this.