Portsmouth Home Drew 0 – 0
Internationals over, even Saturday’s games over… time for the football world to turn its attentions to Southampton v Portsmouth (never mind the Manchester derby that would have filled the northbound trains from Euston). Will Still gave a start to Fellows, accompanied by Azaz and Archer up front in front of an orthodox back four. Don’t know (or care much) what Pompey usually do, but for this game they were in their opponents’ faces from the start; we should have expected as much but our team struggled to respond. Within ten minutes Dozzell hit the bar after a poor clearance and a goal for the visitors then, or at any time in the first half, would have been well deserved. Manager Still was lucky to escape a caution for coming out of his technical area to retrieve the ball after his opposite number attempted to delay the game – an odd strategy with his team so much on top. Our problem was that every forward pass seemed to be in the air towards Archer who was never going to win anything against Poole and Shaughnessy. Einstein’s definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and, although Roerslev could be seen gesturing for Archer to come closer, we did persist in the over and over approach. There had been an opportunity to regroup when Ogilvie collided with goalkeeper Schmid with both needing lengthy attention for head injuries and Schmid was eventually forced off – it wasn’t until 45+6 that substitute Killip had a shot to save (it was the only Southampton effort on target in the whole match, while Bazunu only had one tame effort to deal with, although plenty more went wide of his posts). Ogilvie failed to appear for the second half but it was the same Southampton team… only something had changed as suddenly the red and whites were the side on top. Fellows seemed to have moved further inside and Azaz further forward so Archer wasn’t left so exposed and it was he who had the best early opportunity to break the deadlock after the interval but he didn’t trust himself to shoot from a narrow angle after going round Killip, and there was no support for the pull back. With Saints enjoying their best period of the match, it was no surprise that the bench wasn’t called upon until a triple change on 76 minutes that included a debut for Jander, on for Downes; soon afterwards Robinson and a third debutant, Scienza, were introduced. Scienza appears to have an unusual game plan which is to fall over for as many free kicks as possible – he succeeded, although I don’t think he’ll be one of my favourites. Deep into added time Saints won a corner after a set piece following a foul (on Scienza, of course) and Harwood-Bellis had a free header but was off balance and the ball flew over/
So ended the first goal-less draw in this fixture since a match at The Dell in 1924. The return ended 1-1 but one person who won’t see this year’s Fratton game is the idiot who ran on the pitch from the Northam End in the first half. Saints collected four on-field cautions to Pompey’s two, plus Mr. Still eventually managed to talk his way into the book as well. Southampton’s possession was nearly 60% but Portsmouth had eight shots to our four, adding substance to the view that we had the better players but they had the better team.
Three LSSC Man of the Match candidates to choose from:
3. Ryan Manning. A more assured performance than his right-side counterpart. Roerslev.
5. Jack Stephens. In the first half he’d have wished to be having as easy a ride as the Portsmouth centre backs.
24. Shea Charles. To compare him to Downes would be like comparing Manning and Roerslev. Maybe a partnership with Jander will be the way forward?
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