PRESTON 1 POMPEY 0

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Pompey Sound Podcasts 17 min 2 speakers 8 chapters transcribed

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What were the key moments of the Preston vs. Pompey match?

Duncan Barkes 0:00

Preston 1 Pompey 0 and I was geared up to say that that was a goalless draw that we lost because it was wasn't it it was a goalless draw it had goalless draw written all over it the weather the state of their pitch the state of their pitch but it was a goalless draw and then the last part of the game particularly the last 10 or 15 minutes it was our game And we could not only have equalised, we could have won it. We just didn't get any luck in their box. People will argue that we weren't sharp enough, creative enough, whatever. But we just didn't get the rub of the green. The rub of the green, the luck of the draw. Football's very much about those sorts of things. Most sports are, actually. But maybe football in particular has to do... I remember Sven-Goran Eriksson, when he was asked about the difference between two teams, he said sometimes it's simply the coat of paint on the posts.

Duncan Barkes 1:08

And you can see what he means by that. And that's pretty much how it was against Preston. We were the better side. We were. Easily, actually. Just look at the corner count. I mean, any clever gambler who plays spot gambling, who backed corners, is currently rolling in money. We were so superior to them in so many ways. But they got a fluke goal. Come back to that in a second. We're not tall enough. And the one thing that I carried with me from the first half was one of their first corners, probably their only corner, actually, in which I was looking at who was marking who. And at this level in football, it's determined previously. You know, you don't just pick up some loose guy if you're defending a corner.

Duncan Barkes 2:06

You don't just pick up one of their players in the box and say, oh, I'll have him. And it was clear that Chaplin had been designated to mark Odeluga Ophir. He's 6'2", going 6'6". And Chaplin isn't. And it was almost hilarious. It was very brave of him to actually get confrontational and physical with a fire, which he was doing. He was blocking him, holding him, arguing with him, making his life difficult.

How did luck play a role in the match outcome?

Duncan Barkes 2:42

And it was, you know, like a Laurel and Hardy situation. A huge guy and a very, very not huge guy. Anyway, just as a matter of interest, so you can picture how big O'Fire is, his uncle is a guy called Martin O'Fire, a legendary rugby player, rugby union and rugby league, who was beyond huge and beyond quick. And O'daluga has got an awful lot of his attributes. So I think that one of Martin O'Fire's other nephews also plays professional rugby union for Bath. But O'daluga O'Fire was huge and fast. And we had nobody better to mark him than Conor Chaplin. We need some height and we need some beef. We've started to recruit it. And it can't come too soon. Because let's talk about corners for just a second.

Duncan Barkes 3:39

We had, was it 14 of them? And they were all innocuous, I think. We may have got it into the mix once. That's what you want to do. Get it into the mix. Get it into the six-yard box, bibbling around on the deck. Unless you've got, you know, Shocknessy, who will meet it perfectly with his forehead and bury it. But he isn't available. So we've got to hope that it bobbles and we get it into the mix. I'm not going to dwell on the fact that I believe four of our corners at least went straight out of play. And one commentator said that this could have something to do with the fact that the pitch is awful and the area around the pitch is even more awful. And that makes taking corners in particular really challenging.

Duncan Barkes 4:30

Let's assume for the sake of Segacic, who's a great player. No, not a great player, but he's got real promise. Didn't have his best game yesterday. He cut inside onto his left foot pretty much every time he got the ball so the full-back knew exactly how to deal with him. And his final effort, even if he found himself in some space and able to deliver something, a straightforward pass or a telling pass, it tended not to happen. So it wasn't his best performance, but... We know what he can do and we're still huge fans, huge fans.