Duncan Barkes

And perhaps even more important, defending set-pieces, in particular corner kicks, right throughout the game from start to finish.

The fact that Pompey made a number of visits to Crystal Palace to look at their youth set up and their youth team playing didn't have nothing to do with the fact that that set up is geographically very convenient compared from the point of view of getting there from Portsmouth.

Compared to a lot of other teams and Crystal Palace famously have a pretty good youth set up and will be looking for and will always be looking for opportunities to send their players in their late teens, early 20s out on loan.

in order to get them match up and also to make an assessment about their prospects playing for their first team.

I think the piece that we just heard simplified things a little bit to say that, or suggest that, John Massino and the team went up to have a look at Mustapha and came home disappointed.

with Franco Ume, I'm quite certain that they didn't want to come home empty-handed, you know, kind of did a bit of window shopping and wanted to have something gift-wrapped when they got back from their journeys.

I'm sure it's a much more complicated business than that.

And as far as attitude and discipline goes, which is the other word that I've read that Miroslav Klose has to apply,

in a negative way to Mustafa, suggests that punctuality, possibly, general attitude, his general attitude was one of the reasons why they decided to let him go back to Crystal Palace.

But that doesn't mean to say he's not a good footballer.

And just because Miloslav Kloss decided that he didn't want to carry on working with him doesn't mean to say that there isn't something there that John Massino and Rich Hughes and the rest of the guys can cultivate.

So as we head towards January, there at least is one sort of name in the frame, as Brucey used to put it.

Pompey 2, Blackburn 1.

On a personal note, this report's a little bit later than normal, and that's because it's my birthday.

And, of course, I haven't had a better birthday present than that result and performance since I got a second-hand racing bike when I was 14.

Staying on a personal note just for a few seconds longer, one of the drawbacks of having a birthday close to Christmas...

is that one or two cheapskate relatives give you what they call a combined Christmas and birthday present.

And they try to imply that if you look at the value of the present, it is what the value of two separate presents, a Christmas present and a birthday present, would have been.

But it never was.

It was just one present and they had economised.