Chapter 1: What were the key moments in the Charlton vs. Pompey match?
Charlton 1, Pompey 3.
Chapter 2: How does spectatorship affect the experience of football fans?
I don't think we realise sometimes how exhausting football can be as a spectator of a spectator sport. I mean, game's just over. I've got myself a beer. I'm just taking stock and I hardly know where to start except Charlton 1, Pompey 3. That'll do. That'll do big time. You know... Two games we lost because the gods, quite frankly, decided that we would because the other team didn't beat us.
And we played absolutely fine. We didn't beat ourselves, but our last two games, The gods decreed that we'd lose. That's all you can say. And they're out there, the gods. I don't know what they are or who they are. But in this evening's game, the gods decided that we would get our just deserves. Because 2-0 at half-time was absolutely about right, really.
A little bit of luck with Devlin's effort for his first goal of the two. The penalty was also a little bit lucky. We'd have been upset if it had been given against us, wouldn't we? Be honest, come on. But it was given to us for us. The ref probably got some stick at halftime from Charlton about it. And you would, again, if it had been us.
John Messina would have said something as the officials came off at halftime. And it may have influenced the referee with a couple of other possible penalties that we could have had and maybe compared to the one that we got, should have had. But OK, you know, that's life without VAR.
And on the whole, I think most of us are coming round to believing that life without VAR would just be that much more authentic. But anyway, anyway, to the performance, we nearly went one behind after 30 seconds, less than 30 seconds. Less than 30 seconds they were through on goal.
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Chapter 3: What role did luck play in the match outcomes?
And their guy did almost everything right, except Schmidt had got down and spread himself. A dink would have done it, but instead he thought he would place it wide of where he thought Smith's extended, very long two legs were going to be. But Smith had got his body down and he blocked it superbly. He does that so well, doesn't he? He's a good shot blocker, as well as other things.
Sometimes the high crosses, but we'll talk about that another time. He's a great shot blocker. And his general football is fantastic. There was a moment in the second half where we had a free kick just on our side of the halfway line and he took it. He was that far forward and he was that instrumental and constructive and playing in the game. But no, they could have gone 1-0 up.
Now, what would have happened then? Would the result have been Pompey 3, Charlton 1 or 2 then? Or would the game have changed completely? And would we have had the stuffing knocked out of us? And this is not a criticism of Pompey. This is not a failing of Pompey. This is human nature, which you've got to understand. You've got to get on top of.
If we'd gone 1-0 down with less than a minute on the clock, it would have been a completely different performance. and a completely different result. There's no two ways about it, but it didn't go in. And we collected ourselves and we took the first half, just as we have done in our last two games.
We're becoming a very good side in the first half, taking control of the game early on, going with the momentum that the crowd and the adrenaline of the moment provides the players with in the first 10 minutes. Football is a different game in the first 10 minutes
than from the remaining 80 minutes because of the adrenaline and the possibility and the freshness of the crowd and the unexpectedness of the moment and the excitement about how things might pan out an hour and a half later. It's a different game. And we've learned. We used to be pretty poor in the first half. The first 20 minutes, sometimes, we just weren't at the races.
But the last few games... We've really started to get hold of the game by the scruff of the neck in the first 10 minutes and maintain it for the whole of the first half. So that's really good. We went in at half-time 2-0 and looking as though we might be able to sit on it. We'd have been happy to have sat on it. As it was, Terry Devlin picked the ball up. I mean, this is added.
Wrexham wanted to offer two million, we're told, for him. And we said, no, that's not enough. And he's not for sale anyway, but that's not enough. Well. People will be watching him now on YouTube clips and they'll be going, this boy, Pompey turned down two million for him. We want him.
We're a lower league, Premier League outfit, but we need a right back who can do this, who can defend well, who's a solid defender. I keep saying he reminds me as a defender a bit of Stuart Pearce. No nonsense, straightforward. goes for the ball, gets the ball, out jumps his opponent, does all those things right. But when he goes forward,
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Chapter 4: How did the first half performance impact the game's momentum?
And we finally had... No, this is no offence to Andre Duzel, who deserves all the first-team starting pick places that he has achieved this season. He is a first-team player. He's just about got the lot. But he doesn't somehow have quite the meat and menace. This is what I'm talking about. It's a good phrase. Pac and Adams have meat and menace.
I mean, Dozell is really accomplished, and he's effective. Effective is one of those words which is used to describe somebody, basically, who can give it out. Dozell can give it out, but he's not quite as meaty or as menacing as Pack and Adams. That may come. Hope it does, because he's a credential and he's a Pompey player and he plays the game the Pompey way. So we sort of missed him.
And yet again, we didn't. Marlon Pack lasted the game, which is a fantastic credential for him. You wonder about Millwall on Saturday. How long has he got? He's got Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Lots of ice baths, lots of hot baths. And lots of warming down, as they call it now. Apparently they warm down the following day.
They come into training and after parking their four-wheel drives, they get changed and they go warm down. You know, 12, 15 hours or more after the game. So a great deal of attention is paid to the player's recovery from a game. And Pac is going to need to recover because he was everywhere. He was doing everything.
His long throws were a potent weapon going forward, but so was his penetrative passing going forward. So was his general tackling, his aerial combat. Just playing in front of the back four, he was a brick wall. And playing next to him, he had a man who was both a brick wall and, you know, just perpetual...
motion in eboy adams what a what a what a steal what a find have we ever spent half a million quid better than better than him you'd argue i suppose if you're a lang fan perhaps but you i think if you had to choose between the two i think you would say that the man that we need at the the telescopic sights of the possibility that we might be in for a relegation battle.
As we look at it in the cold light of the day, you want Adams. You need Adams. You need him on the wall. He played really well. Ogilvy, of course, played as well as Ogilvy always does. Regan Paul also had a great game. He's starting to become a player who consistently is in the right place. And that has to do with footballing noose as well as athletic ability.
He wins his headers, he wins his tackles. But when the ball is bobbling, and this happens such a lot in the Championship, it doesn't happen so much in the Premier League, the ball bobbling in the penalty area you're defending, suddenly it's cleared and you look carefully and it's Regan Poole. Nick Schmidt had another solid game, stopped everything. His kicking is extraordinary.
He started kicking from hand. Noticed it against Sheffield United. He started dropping the ball and kicking it before it lands from his hands. I think the whole of the season and last season he hardly ever once kicked it from his hands. Don't know why. He gets extra distance. The trouble is he gets too much distance. This is a guy who can kick the ball and it travels through the air 70, 75 yards.
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Chapter 5: What were the standout performances from individual players?
Meanwhile, we are up to, where are we in the league? Just get the table up quickly here. We are up to 19th. 36 points from 31 games. Behind us, West Brom, two points behind us, but we've got a game in hand on them. And the bottom three, the top of those is Leicester, who are four points behind us, and we've got a game in hand on them.
Still loads of work to be done, but lots of stuff to work with. Charlton 1, Pompey 3.