No, I am not referring to the disallowed Brett Pitman goal, albeit something that went against Pompey. As Kenny Jackett conceded, too many wrong decisions from the Blues proved costly at Oxford.
When the game was goalless Pitman was denied a goal that would have put Pompey ahead… it wasn’t to be and Oxford made the most of this let off.
Oxford went ahead when Luke McGee failed to keep hold of Christian Ribeiro’s effort and Wes Thomas scored. Gino van Kessel secured the win for the U’s with an individual goal in the final 10 minutes.
Josh Ruffels’ added time goal rounded off a disappointing afternoon for the Blues.
Having Pitman’s goal ruled out disappointed Jackett but he wasn’t using this as an excuse telling portsmouthfc.co.uk he thought the 1st half performance wasn’t too bad but we became too exposed as we pushed to get back into the game after falling behind.
He said: ‘We produced a pretty decent first half performance and were unlucky not go ahead. It looked a good goal from Brett, but you always get decisions like that and we can’t feel sorry for ourselves.’
Adding: ‘The harder we tried going forward in the second period, the more open we looked at the back. Their substitutes were more incisive than ours and had a bigger effect on the game, particularly on the break. Oxford were happy to sit deep and we didn’t take our 1v1 situations to actually get past people.’
Poor decision making also allowed it easy for Oxford, admittedly a good side who Jackett feels will do well in League One this season but this is what Pompey want too, which will require better performances.
‘We consistently made the wrong decisions and that resulted in them looking more dangerous on the counter than we did in possession. We didn’t do enough as a team and we made it too easy for our opponents. They’re a good side, but we want to do well ourselves and perform better than that.’
There wasn’t much better news about Tareiq Holmes-Dennis either.
It now appears the Huddersfield loanee, expected to miss at least four months, will in fact sit out the remainder of the season as the boss feels his operation on Monday is going to mean he’ll do well to play again during this campaign, effectively ending his Pompey spell.
However, Jackett’s backed him to come back strong, even if this isn’t with the Blues.
‘It’s not good. He needs a knee operation on Monday because the cartilage is quite badly damaged and I would think he’ll miss the remainder of the season. We wish him all the best and he will get back because he’s a determined man. He’s young enough to bounce back.’
PLAY UP POMPEY
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2017-18 Prediction League – August
Fulham U21 (h) – Wednesday 16th August 2017 – click here.
Walsall (h) – Saturday 19th August 2017 – click here.
Wigan (a) – Saturday 26th August 2017 – click here.
