Bleedin’ Doncaster, our bogey team struck once again…
Pompey went to the Keepmoat Stadium looking to extend the unbeaten run but a disastrous opening five minutes put paid to that as Doncaster ran out 2-1 winners on Tuesday.
Having barely recovered from the setback of conceding on three minutes when Liam Mandeville scored this lead was doubled when Christian Burgess – who remains a player we desperately want to tie down to a new contract – put past his own goalkeeper Luke McGhee just two minutes later.
A calamitous own goal from Mathieu Baudry, when the Doncaster keeper somehow managed to allow a back pass under his foot, gave Pompey hope but Dion Donohue’s senseless sending off left the Blues playing with 10 men for the final 20 minutes and there was no way back.
Kenny Jackett, quoted by the News, rued a poor start when ‘we got it wrong.’
He said: ‘Our start was poor, we got it wrong. Tommy Rowe has gone past our right-back and central-midfield players too easily on the edge of the box and slotted somebody in for the first goal.’
Adding: ‘Then they have had two other chances straight away from corners, where Rowe and then Joe Wright have got the first headers – one resulting in an own goal from Burgess and the other hit their player on the line. They have had three clear-cut chances in those five minutes, which is disappointing from our team and our set-up.’
When we recovered from that nightmare start Jackett didn’t think we played too badly, in fact he was quite happy but things didn’t go our way.
‘After that I wasn’t disappointed with the way the players played. There were some key moments such as Burgess’ header from a set-piece and Conor Chaplin’s free-kick which hit the post, while their keeper saved at the end from Jamal Lowe’s header,’ Jackett continued.
Despite going down to 10 men he went on to say he was happy we had ‘kept going’ and were able to make ‘a good fist of it and showed a good attitude.’
PLAY UP POMPEY
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2017-18 Prediction League – October
Blackburn (a) – Saturday 21st October 2017 – click here.
Bradford (h) – Saturday 28th October 2017 – click here.
