Duncan Barkes

And that is about as biting as it gets, but not with Arsenal.

They were playing some beautiful geometric shapes.

One-touch football, good-touch football, soft-touch football.

The passes were in the right place and coming at the player at the right speed.

And even before the player was picked out and even before he knew the ball was coming, he knew what he'd do with it when it arrived.

He was aware of the availability of probably more than one, maybe two or three Arsenal players who he could just ping it to.

And towards the end of the game, they were backheeling and they were flicking.

And it wasn't showboating.

They weren't rubbing our noses in the score at all.

They were backheeling the ball because it was the cutting edge thing to do.

It was the right thing to do.

The backheel was the pass to make.

And that's so often in the championship.

You get people trying the odd backheel.

If they're showboating, if they fancy it, if they think there's somebody in the stand who maybe has come to scout them, they'll just put on a little effort with a backheel here and a flick there.

And they don't come off 90% of the time.

Virtually all the Arsenal ones did.

And some of their attacking passes, they were splitting our defence.

They were putting passes through for players to run 20, 30 yards onto, knowing that their player, their colleague, would be quicker than whoever was competing with them for Pompey because they were quick all over the pitch.

Incredibly quick.