Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Pompey vs. Blackburn match result?
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...
Chapter 2: How does the host feel about celebrating their birthday after the match?
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.
Now, all I'm saying, the only reason I'm mentioning that is because I don't want that result to me, just for me, to be a combined Christmas and birthday present. I want a second present on or around Christmas Day. Well, it was a good result, wasn't it? And it was a good performance. The first 20 minutes, we looked like what John Massino has described as the good team that we're capable of being.
Or is the word decent? Decent, I think, is the exact word he may have used. But he pointed out that when we're not on song, then we're not a decent side. And I think that is a very good analysis of the Pompey that we have at the moment. Capable of being a good side, a decent side.
And giving a team like Blackburn, who let's always remember, were the third most successful away team in the entire championship. They were away specialists. And they had their captain back. who was a very capable player, if extremely annoying, but a very good footballer. So they had every right to expect that they would get something from us.
And when they scored, there was almost a sense of, well, of course, we're going to beat this lot. That was why nobody went to celebrate with the goal scorer, did you notice? But anyway, they scored and our heads dropped a little. And I believe there was some booing at half-time. Shame on those so-called supporters.
I'm coming round to thinking that if you don't know how to support Pompey, go and support somebody else. We don't want you. You're allowed to express concern, but booing the team is borderline sick. So don't do it. Find some other way. Please. It didn't have the desired effect.
Don't pretend to yourself, don't kid yourself, the boo merchants, that your booing is what turned Pompey round in the second half. It isn't. What turned Pompey round is John Massino going to his little office at Fratton Park, and I've been, and it is a tiny office with no windows, to have a few moments by himself to consider what he was going to say to the players.
And whatever it was he said, it worked. It worked big time because that second half performance, you know, crowned off by those two fantastic goals. I mean, copybook goals, match of the day goals. They really were, was really hopeful for us. And if we can keep it up, anything like that.
When we go to Derby and indeed through towards January and the window and then the rest of the season, then of course we're going to be safe. There are no easy games in the Championship, but then we're good enough to make one or two teams or three or four teams look ordinary or even less than ordinary. And that's what we did to Blackburn, frankly. They weren't very good.
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Chapter 3: What analysis does the host provide about Pompey's performance in the first half?
They didn't remind us that we only sing when we're winning because it does knock the stuffing out of the singing fans for a moment or two or ten. But they weren't a very good side. They didn't deserve to be 1-0 up, but there they were 1-0 up. And we've got a mountain to climb because the statistics are that when we concede first, we hardly ever get anything out of the game.
And we haven't won a game where we conceded first this season. We've only won four or five now. So that statistic is hardly surprising. However, we went in at half-time. They had to endure that chorus. It wasn't a huge booing chorus, but there were fans who felt that that needed saying. I've never met any fans who do that. I can understand it being almost an instinctive thing.
But what are you booing? What do you think it's going to achieve? Oh, it's beyond me. Absolutely beyond me. And like I say, I don't mean it because a Pompey fan is a Pompey fan and a friend. But, you know, I find myself saying, if you don't like it, then go and support Bournemouth or Crawley or something. Because it doesn't help. That's what I'm saying.
The club don't need your money that much, frankly. So let's remember that the business of being a supporter is to support, not to detract. Okay, rant over. That one's over. So out we came for the second half, and we looked not quite as good as we had at the beginning of the first half. We were so good for the first 15, 20 minutes. Everything was working. Everything looked hopeful.
I don't think anybody was sitting back. thinking to themselves, oh, here's three points coming, because there's an anxiety about the business of being at a football match where your team are languishing in the relegation zone. You necessarily have had so many disappointments that you're not going to go overboard in your confidence.
So, OK, so we're playing really well, but we didn't take anything for granted. And we were right not to take anything for granted because they scored three. And we went in 1-0 down. And then we came out. And let's talk about a couple of individual performances and the goal. Lang was fantastic, wasn't he? He was industrious. He was committed. He was talking to his players.
He was making suggestions. He was showing the way with the way in which he played, which is the only way I think he can play. What a spot he was. I can't understand why some other bigger clubs with bigger wallets didn't pick him up when we did. Was he not playing like that before he came to us? Have we worked some sort of, waved some sort of magic wand over him? Or what? Who knows?
I don't know who was officially the man of the match, but he should be, I say. Matthews has grown in confidence enormously at his 6'3", 6'4". And you know what? It doesn't hurt to have a six foot three, six foot four presence in the middle of the back, at the back. Begins to look like it. He's becoming, he's fleshing out a little bit. I think they're putting a bit of weight on him.
I think they're giving him a few carbs, beef him up a little bit. And Boett, well, he got the goal. So we'll come to that in just a moment. Devlin was amazing. He always is. There's nothing flashy or stylish about Devlin yet. Who knows? but he gets the job done. He's not just earnest and industrious, he's successful in what he does.
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Chapter 4: What role did fan support play during the game?
Clever bloke. Clever footballer. It was good to see Colby Bishop have a run out. He didn't threaten, but he gave our goalkeeper the option of the long ball. Now, I tuned into the BBC at half-time to see what was being said, and somebody had sent in A text saying that Schmidt was kicking the ball long too often. Well, he wasn't. He hardly ever did. I don't know what game that bloke was watching.
He wasn't kicking the ball long. He kicked it once or twice long because Blackburn...
worked out that he couldn't kick it long because he had four forwards all of whom were five foot six there's no point going long when you your guys are a foot shorter than half the other team so he was looking for the short ball out of out of the penalty area when he had it and generally speaking he worked it well our two full backs went wide and somebody would then come forward
In the middle, one of our midfield players would come back towards him in the middle of the pitch and he'd often get the ball and then would know that one or both of the full-backs were on for a pass so it would go square out to them. And that's clearly a training ground thing and it was very successful. It meant we kept the ball.
When Schmidt did knock it long for variety to keep them on their toes, we didn't get it. And often we didn't pick up their header. So they would get their head on the ball first when the ball had travelled 60 yards. And then they'd get their hands, or their feet rather, on the ball when it was headed forward by the Blackburn defence.
Boett scored the most fantastically textbook perfect winning goal. And didn't he enjoy it? And shouldn't he enjoy it? Poor lad, the weight that he had doing nothing for a year.
because of an innocuous incident on the training ground with nobody around him and he stuck it out and he's beginning to show what a prospect he is let's remember that he's not only a good player he's a prospect for the future and that header was perfect I've looked at it again and again nobody clears a path for him he isn't being overly protected by the rest of the Pompey players which is what often happens
at a set-piece, at a corner, the rest of the players clear the way for the designated target man. And it didn't look to me as though he was. I think if anybody was, it would have been Matthews. But it came to Boat. He had a little bit of space around him, enough to make the jump and to steer the ball into the perfect spot, into the corner, down, level with where the goalkeeper's feet were.
You can't stop them. The goalkeeper can't get down that quickly. It was perfection. But in some ways, the equaliser was even more perfect because it meant an assist for Murphy and that will do him the world of good because he's just sort of faded a little bit in the last few games, it seems to me.
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Chapter 5: What were the key moments that shifted the game's momentum?
And there was Lange to absolutely crash the ball into the roof of the net. It was a tap-in, but that doesn't do for Lange. Lange wants to burst the net, doesn't he? And so he did. And we all went bonkers. and then the winning goal went in, and then we just had to hold on. And I thought we held on as consummately as I've ever seen, well, as I've seen us for a long time.
There wasn't a great deal of anxiety on the pitch at all, and there wasn't a great deal of anxiety amongst the crowd. I think it was seen by all concerned, including the Blackburn players and supporters, that 2-1 to us was a fair score. I haven't seen the interview with Ismail, their beleaguered manager, but I'm suspecting that he will say that they could have played better.
Pompey, they'll say well-organised. They always say that when we're the better team. Oh, Pompey were well-organised. That's the closest they can come to saying they were good or just simply they were better than us. And we were better than them on the day. And it was the best birthday present I've had for Pompey. Well, since I was 14, as I said. So thank you for that, Pompey.
And I reiterate that I hope that's not my combined Christmas and birthday present. And as you can probably hear from the state of my voice, a celebration took place after the game at our gaff. in honour of the result, as well as my birthday. And I'm a little bit the worse for wear. I hope it doesn't sound frayed at the edges, but I'm off for a hair of the dog, wouldn't you? Yeah. Talk soon.