Pompey’s run, as it was bound to at some point, finally came to an end last night when we were – to be honest – slightly unfortunate to come away from Bristol City with nothing but a 2-1 defeat…
Steve Cotterill thought that we were ‘superb’ and ‘dominated the game’, which he thought we ‘deserved to win’ and were actually the ‘better team by far’.
So, all in all I think it is safe to say, and he did, that we should have won: ‘we dominated the game and deserved to win. We were superb. We pinned them in their half and out-footballed them.
‘Bristol City are a good team with a lot of pace in their side, but we played very, very well and were the better team by far in all departments.
‘We were fitter and stronger and passed the ball better. We just didn’t stick the ball in the net when we might have done when we had the chances.’
I will say that I thought we played pretty well, especially in the 1st half – actually I thought we played some fantastic football at times.
The problem that we had, as we had so much of our season though, was that we did not get enough support coming into the box and the ‘strikers’ certainly were not doing enough striking! Not enough effort came in at goal full stop.
We got into so many good positions, getting in behind their defence countless times, but the lack of support was criminal as was the final ball at times, which was occasionally way too short or just too long. All too often we delivered into the 6-yard box, and that will be bread and butter to Jamo all day long as he commands his area so well.
Having already has an effort ruled out for offside, and rightly so, Cotterill thought that the 2nd goal was also offside but took a ‘swings and roundabouts’ view on this one.
Although he thought the defending could have been much better for the 1st: ‘their second goal was offside when their player ran off Ricardo Rocha – we`ve seen a recording of it. I think the linesman got caught looking at the ball, and the lad has got in.
‘We were on the wrong end of one here but we were on the right end of one against Scunthorpe a week ago when they scored a perfectly good goal, so we have to take it.
‘But we have ourselves to blame for the first goal, where we should have done better.’
I only saw the goal as it happened, the 1st one I mean, and whilst the guy went on a fantastic run it did ‘seem’ all too easy as he waltzed his way through – the 2nd, it was at the other end of the ground so there was no way of knowing if he was on or off.
WHY Cotterill did not make changes earlier, and offensive instead of defensive when he did, is beyond me?
He thinks that if we had scored 10 minutes earlier it ‘could’ have made a difference: ‘by the time we scored it was only a consolation. It would have been interesting if we had scored five or 10 minutes earlier.’
Which begs the question, again, WHY not have made this change – when Kanu came on 5 or 10-minutes earlier?
The game was crying out for a change, and what a difference Kanu – again – made!
I assume that Nadir Ciftci was also on the bench so why not have thrown players on and gone for it – surely if you are 2-0 down and looking defeat square in the face its just as well to throw everything at it and lose 3 or 4-0 having gone for it instead of almost ‘settling’ for 2-0?
This still puzzles me…
The most ironic thing is that in the run of wins we have not ‘really’ played that well, last night for large spells – as said especially in the 1st half – we played some top class football, yet lost!
We MUST get more support coming forward as the lack of support arriving, or strikers being in the box, is what really cost us here methinks.
To be fair to Bristol City they played some good football and hit us well on the counter – I would not say that we ‘deserved to win’ or ‘should have won’, but do believe that we ‘deserved not to lose!’
Hey ho, all good things come to an end – as paultsmouth title his match report – click here.
Now we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and get back to winning ways to get the 3pts against Boro to ensure that the ‘catastrophic run’, that Cotterill said we will need to go on to go down now – and those ‘lingering’ play-off thoughts are gone too, does not happen…
PLAY UP POMPEY!
