Duncan Barkes

The issue is clear, they can't score.

With only 26 goals all season, only one team in the division has a worse record.

Against Derby County, Jacob Brown led the line as the team took 27 shots without success, while Colby Bishop, who has just one league goal from open play this season, was dropped to the bench.

But Kirk is back in the mix, getting his first minutes in five weeks after recovering from an Achilles problem.

The summer signing from St Johnstone arrived with a reputation as a goalscorer, having found the net nine times last season for a team that finished bottom of the SPL.

Now Messina is mulling over whether to give the 22-year-old, who has one goal in four starts and 10 substitute appearances for Pompey, a bigger role.

That's the temptation, Messina repeated, when asked about starting Kirk.

Max scored against Coventry but he hasn't had a huge amount of starts for us, maybe four.

By the same token if you're looking to score more goals, he's worth considering.

Max got his goal, and maybe you think he's the one we need to turn to.

Blackburn 1 Pompey 1 now if you look at the bald score line you know towards the end of the season we'll look at our results and we'll go yeah we got a point at Blackburn that's not bad going that'll do that helped us but at this moment in time two minutes after the final whistles gone we feel gutted we feel absolutely and utterly crestfallen and

we feel robbed did we rob ourselves or did did did they come and mug us it's a bit of both uh blair has a number of great strengths but he's not a left back i mean what was he doing there isn't that where swanson's supposed to be playing eliminating the threat from their forward right wing but

It didn't work out that way.

I'm not going to blame anybody for that.

I'm talking about their equalising goal, because I don't know if you've noticed, but when you watch a football match, the last 10 or 15 minutes, when the game is over and you're on your way home or whatever, the last 10 or 15 minutes loom far larger than the preceding hour and a bit.

That's the way our memory works.

And we experienced...

the elation of possibly coming away with three points.

And it was wonderful to see Connor Ogilvie on the score sheet.

He is such a soldier of ours.