Chapter 1: What were the highlights of the Wrexham vs. Pompey match?
Wrexham 2 Pompey 1 and games just just finished with massive celebrations from Wrexham because they just managed to hold on and that is the size of it they just managed to hold on it was one of those games which at the end of the season you look at you open your program and
for the last game and you look at all the results through the season and there are games that you remember quite vividly and you're reminded of them and there are games then that you sort of vaguely remember And then there are games that you find you've kind of relegated into oblivion in your own mind.
And I think that that game, Rex and Pompey, is one that we'll struggle to remember in any way because it was entirely unremarkable. It was a game that they won because they were at home playing. We were tired. They were probably equally tired, let's remember, but they were at home. And that meant that they just had a bus ride to the ground, whereas we had a right schlep of a round trip.
I suspect that they, I don't know, that we went up the night before and then had to kill a day in North Wales in preparation for the game.
Chapter 2: How did fatigue impact the players' performance in the game?
And that's just not the same as waking up in your own bed, just being at home with your family through until whatever time they show up at the ground for away games, five o'clock, six o'clock, whatever. And we've been packing our overnight bags up in hotels. It makes all the difference.
It has to, especially four out of five games within two weeks with the players not only feeling their fatigue, but knowing that if they can, they've got to save something for Saturday, which is what have we got? Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. OK, most of those players was an unchanged side. It was the same side that ran themselves into the ground on Saturday.
And here they are now on a Tuesday night after having probably done a great long coach trip, five hours, something like that. And then spent a difficult day waiting for the game to happen. That was the difference between the two teams in my book.
If you edit the goals out, OK, we'll come back to that in a second because, yeah, OK, we conceded two headers, which some people will make a big remark out of. We aren't a tall team and it will be good to have Shaughnessy back. No offence to Ogilvy, who is superb as a centre-half. But he just doesn't have the aerial dominance. He's never going to. He's not really a centre-half.
He's a good centre-half. He's a very good left-back. But we're covered in that department.
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Chapter 3: What statistical insights can we gather from the match?
Again, we'll have a word about Swanson in a moment. But no, take the goals out of that game. And it was a drab stalemate, a goalless draw. It wasn't particularly exciting. there were some good performances across the park from them and From us as well. I thought Harvey Blair in particular and
stood out but on the whole we were worth a point and I think everybody is going to be saying the same thing after the game that we were worth a point what comments I have seen in the few minutes towards the end of the game and after the game the feeling is that they were delighted to come away with three points and I did see
Their manager, Phil Parkinson, punched the air as if they'd won something spectacular when the final whistle went. And I think that really kind of summed up their feeling. That was not a game between one team that is really pressing for honours and promotion to the Premier League. and another team who are, to all intents, struggling to avoid relegation to League One.
If those two things were going to happen, and they're not, then you've got two divisions, two tiers between those two teams. And there weren't two tiers between those two teams, at least not during that game. Maybe across the whole season, you could slip a cigarette paper between the two of them. But on this occasion, in the course of that match, there was nothing to choose between the teams.
Actually, if anything, on statistics, Pompey came out absolutely flying colors ahead of them one that caught my eye is that we had 15 corners in that game 15 corners we had and they had three and that that doesn't necessarily sum everything up but it certainly tells some of us that we were going down the wings And we were attacking wide, and that was how come a lot of those corners came about.
So that's a strong thing. And speaking of wings, another statistic I haven't noticed before, but obviously I've just not been paying attention, and that is that we got in 29 crosses...
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Chapter 4: How did set pieces affect the outcome of the game?
and they got in just nine. Again, that is very much indicative, not only of the fact that we certainly won the second half, we dominated the second half, that belonged to us, but we were making our attacks virile. We were getting somewhere with them. We weren't just coming up against a brick wall and running into legs and running out of ideas.
We were better than they were in the second half in particular. But those statistics go across the game. So we certainly weren't outclassed in the first half, even though it's probably fair to say that they shaded it. They didn't shade it by two goals.
It's a shame always when you concede two goals and both of them are headers because it makes some people think that we are deficient in some department. And we have to remember that we're playing with only one accredited centre-half, a very good accredited centre-half in Reganpool, by the way. There's no two ways about that. That guy is top draw championship material.
And I think it's fair to say that he would more than cut it in the Premier League. And let's hope he stays with us and that we get him there so that he can prove that. But conceding two headed goals, some people will wrongly say, where was the keeper? Some people will wrongly say that we can't defend set pieces.
We are now defending set pieces perfectly well, but you're going to concede the odd goal at a set piece because so many sides put so much emphasis on set pieces, particularly corners.
to score goals they practice them hard they have their different corners we had a corner towards the end of the game in which we very clearly Sekicic very clearly knew that he had to pick out Ogilvy with a looping far post corner
pick out Ogilvy and because Ogilvy when it comes to aerial combats punches above his weight on this occasion he couldn't get he couldn't get anything meaningful on it and that happens of course and the ball went to Blair and let's have a word about Blair because we've missed him No, when I say we've missed him, I'm being a little bit disingenuous.
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Chapter 5: Who were the standout players in the match?
We, I think, didn't quite know what we had until very recently because he made a couple of starts. We saw a little bit of him before he got injured. And now he's beginning to blossom. And he is, he's what the Pompey coaching staff now like to call somebody who influences the game. And he really does. he gets in behind his fullback. He's quick and he's skillful.
There was one particular bit of skill that was pure Brazilian. You know what I'm driving at in saying that, but it was down the wing. And he skinned a guy. I think he got the ball as a result of a 50-50, but somebody was right on top of him and he gave a little touch and went round the guy and kept it in because it was drifting out. And away he went.
So I think Harvey Blair is somebody else who comes away from this Wrexham game with huge credentials. Marlon Pack was, as we have come to expect from him, we would expect nothing less than for him to be a tower of strength. And he was. And there was a moment again in the...
last 5-10 minutes of the game when Schmidt had the ball and Pak normally dummies that he's going up and then turns and cuts back so that he is on for the straightforward forward pass from the goalkeeper to Pak's feet and you wouldn't want the ball at anybody else's feet if you've got Marlon Pak in your side but on this occasion He kept running. He just kept running. And he was up there.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of this loss for Pompey's season?
I mean, not neck by neck, neck to neck with Colby Bishop, but he was committing himself. And, you know, he's got the tactical noose to know when to do that. But he's also got the legs that enable him to do that. Where does he get those legs from? That is, if I'm not mistaken, three 95-minuters that he's put in. Or is it four?
Certainly three 95-minuters that he's put in over a course of, what is it, 10 days? That's no mean feat. Or I could put it like this and make a pun of it. Those are no mean feats of his down at the end of his ankles. So Pack was outstanding. It would take too long to go through the players who were outstanding. Terry Devlin kind of played where he wanted and always looked in command.
Zach Swanson looked commanding as a defender, but he also looked very potent with the ball going forward as evinced by the fact that he's on the score sheet. And deservedly so. Very nice 1-2 on the edge of the box. Got a little bit of luck with a semi-deflection for our goal. And of course with four minutes gone in the second half and the score now down to 2-1, then everybody...
in a blue scarf is entitled to cross their fingers and thinks to themselves well maybe we can get something from this we were I nearly said far and away the better side in the second half we were significantly noticeably the better side in the second half and this is coming to a club who are looking certainly for a playoff place.
Chapter 7: How does the team plan to recover for the next match?
I think they'll be disappointed if they don't get a playoff place. I think they'll be quite pleased if they get a playoff place but don't make it to the Premier League because they're likely to be swamped. You don't know, of course, but I didn't see much of Premier League personnel or team play about them.
on this occasion to think that they'll do anything other than struggle a lot, unless, of course, an awful lot of Hollywood dollars go into a rebuild in the summer window if they make it through to the Premier League. But I think they'll have a good season, clearly. And they will be there or thereabouts towards the bottom end of the playoff positions, and they might just find themselves involved.
But were they an almost entire table better than us? Obviously. You don't need me to tell you, because you know that they weren't. And they were kind of okay. And we were kind of okay as well. Like I said, take out the goals from a replay and one of the teams, us, have taken six points of nine away from home during this wodge of games. And that is pretty good going. Very good going, actually.
Very promising going. And as we're speaking, they are just drying themselves down in anticipation of getting on a bus. Well, it's a luxury coach, obviously. One wonders how they deal with it, whether there's a microphone and John Massino says a few words, suggests them to, if they can, stretch out and sleep because we're not going to be home.
It's 10 o'clock now as I speak and they won't be getting in the coach yet. And when they do, they're going to be pulling into the car park down on the south coast sometime in the very middle of the early morning.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from this defeat against Wrexham?
I think it's going to be something like three o'clock in the morning. And they're going to be getting into their cars and getting home early. So half past three, four o'clock, they're going to get their heads down. And it doesn't matter how superbly tuned an athletic physiology you have, tomorrow they're going to feel it. And that means that they've got two recoveries.
They've got to recover from the running and they've got to recover from the journey. And it's all part of being a professional footballer. As Marlon Pack said earlier in the week, when talking about the challenges of exhaustion, he said, we're professional footballers. It's what we do. And that is quite an inspirational thing to say.
And no doubt he leads by example and whatever he does on the coach, the youngsters would be well advised to imitate it. Do they have sleep masks? I wouldn't be surprised. Do they have noise reduction headphones? I would be very surprised if they don't. Can they stretch out? I've never seen the inside of a Pompey team bus. They used to call them team buses. They're far more than that now.
But I don't know whether the players can actually stretch out and more or less sleep as if they were in a small bed. But it's the kind of the way in which you want to wind down. after so many games, hard and fast, and another one coming up, and it's another odd kickoff.
If you listened to an interview with John Massino's dad earlier in the week on Pompey Sound, he was talking a little bit about the sheer demands on the players, not just physically, but mentally, of so many games coming hard and fast. And he was also talking about the fact that he personally did not represent John.
He personally is aghast at the different kick-offs that we now have to deal with as fans, never mind how it affects the players. But it's a 12.30 kick-off, isn't it, against Hull? And again, that will feel wrong because our normal Saturday afternoon routine It's badly disrupted, you know, and it just is a different experience. And it gets around to three o'clock in the afternoon.
We should be just settling down to watch the game. And we're standing there in the road, standing there in the road, wondering what to do with the rest of the day. It is a challenge for everybody, the fans and the footballers. But that is, as Marlon Pack said, and I'll say it one last time, we are professional footballers. It's what we do.
And on this occasion, they went up to Wrexham, a budding Premier League side, they think. And we... A side that is working to avoid relegation. And we are still, as I look at the table, some five or six points clear of the bottom three. And we're not a comfortable position at all, but we do still have that game in hand on almost everyone around us.
And a point there will take us up a couple of places to a position of further comfort. So a lot to be taken from today and a lot to be taken from a defeat. It's always hard to say because one has a feeling as though you've been punched in the gut when you go,
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