Duncan Barkes

That time and time again over the last couple of months, this has been the case.

We've been as good, or if not better, for large phases of the game against teams, and we've come away losing by one goal.

Or in the case of QPR, an absurd result, losing by a five-goal margin.

How can this be?

Is it luck?

You end up watching Pompey playing at the moment and, you know, we get the ball into their box, up go the heads, the ball drops.

Every single time it drops to an opposition defender who can hoof it out.

I know we have fewer blue shirts in the box for free kicks and corners than they have defenders.

So mathematically, more often than not, it will fall to an opposition shirt.

But for goodness sake.

The last two or three months, every single drop down in the area, every single little bobbling ball has gone an opposition way and it's been hacked clear.

We haven't had anything fall at the feet of Colby Bishop as a result of just a ball bobbling, a header not being entirely cleared and landing just anywhere, anywhere.

It's been going to them.

And John Massino has actually hinted at the fact that he thinks that Lady Luck ought to turn.

And maybe she is.

Maybe she is.

Their goal, I think we'd have scored it in spite of the fact that Mattson went and scored it.

And I was pleased he went and scored an own goal because I found him very irritating, didn't you?

I don't expect to find Scandinavians, if that's what he is, irritating.

I thought they were straight up and down people and very good at tennis, or at least they were when I was a boy.