Well, what can you say, another weekend and another defeat…
This is very much – with the increased uncertainty at to what the future will bring for this club – like the Portsmouth Football Club of old.
What did Steve Cotterill make of the latest defeat though?
He says that fitness, or a lack of it, is hindering us at the moment and he would prefer a decent week of training than games – he also said that he, and they, will get to where they need to be and sort out the issues: ‘we are not fit enough yet. The only thing the players have done is played the games this week.
‘None of our boys have had a pre-season. We haven’t had a good start that has given us a base fitness-wise.
‘The games come thick and fast and we would have preferred a week’s training.
‘It’s not an easy job. I can’t believe how hard it has been to get where we are.
‘There have been a lot of problems that are deep-rooted but we will get to the bottom of them and turn it around.’
Although surely games increase the fitness, if this is an issue…
He also felt that having created enough chances – and one interview I heard on the radio he got quite irritated when he thought the interviewer suggested otherwise – we deserved more: ‘it’s been like that for the last three games. There’s no reward there. I felt that was a game we deserved to win.
‘It summed it up when their goalkeeper was named man of the match. We played very well and created some good chances.’
I would agree that we deserved more, as losing was hard due to the fact I firmly believe that either side deserved to win at the weekend, so a draw would ‘probably’ have been the fairest result.
The winning goal was shocking as it was NEVER a freekick that saw them score the winning goal – the referee was poor, then again he was poor both ways I guess, it just seemed with some of the bigger calls being the ones we noticed more as they ‘seemed’ more against us.
I know that we are limited in numbers but I retain my thoughts that these numbers, if used in the right ways, are still good enough to at least keep us up – for me it is time for Cotterill to start tinkering a little bit more, as he did to be fair at the weekend.
Personnel changed slightly at the weekend but I would still like to see us give a change of formation a chance, and cannot say that I think an orthodox 4-4-2 would do any worse than we are, in fact I think with the proper people supplying from the wide midfield areas – and I think we DO have a decent enough left midfielder and a right midfielder to do this – to two strikers that would play off each other would benefit us, then again what do I know…
PLAY UP POMPEY!
