HarvSFC

There’s someone who supports Pompey at the club, right? Team selections, transfers, tactics all been pathetic all season. We even signed an attacking midfielder that scores open play goals in January. In a side that doesn’t score goals, but that’s too exciting for the decision makers.

Elyounoussi lost the ball on the half way line, Caleta-Car has to take the man as West Ham are countering. But, he’s excellent off the ball.

What did we do to Sutton? Tipped us and Bournemouth to be record breakers this season with it being very impressive to be on just 7 points after 28 matches. For context, Derby were on 10 after 28 matches.

Big test tonight against Mbappe and the rest of the French squad. Hopefully does well and doesn't kill his confidence.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZxqNknjuSw/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading Nice story with us being his last game in charge.

Our recruitment of players was terrible, as was our recruitment of the management team in November. That's the story, really. A lack of research everywhere. Given all the dross Sports Republic have appointed, and I include the short stay of Joe Shields in that given the summer business, it's lucky Selles was above competent really. I guess if you throw enough mud, some of it sticks. Just have to hope Wilcox is more Selles than Shields in his role.

Burnley and Leeds already tried it last year.

He'll get a three month ban over the summer with a large part of the ban being served during the close season.

Got a good first time assist. Kelleher looked as poor as Bazunu has for us at times this season. Latvia scored 2 out of their 3 shots on target. But, Bazunu does it against Premier League opposition and Latvia just aren't that, while Kelleher warms the Liverpool bench. More big club bias on the old international stage. Another Saints link with Pahars still being part of the Latvia coaching setup.

No more "punts" in the summer, if we stay up. We need four quality £20m+ players, rather than eight £10m punts. It's where last summer went wrong and has been the case for a few windows now.

Palace are in their Ankersen-Jones era. Just got to hope Hodgson performs just as badly, which he did at Watford last season, losing 13 of his 18 games, winning 2.

Ran out of favourites.

Mitrovic only has two league goals since October. Compared to our forwards that's world class form, but he's reverted to type a bit after a strong start.

The Ross Wilson effect.

I don’t get the Elyounoussi selections either. The argument against Edozie and Djenepo is that they give up possession too easily, which they do. However, to my eye Elyounoussi surrenders possession for us just as much and brings nothing and we all know it’s absolutely nothing going forward either. The only thing with Elyounoussi is that he loses the ball a lot of the time indirectly. Indirectly when he can’t get to a through ball because he’s too slow against any full-back in the league. While he also loses it directly because he moves at a walking pace when he does have the ball and he’s also a bit crap on the ball. Leicester being the most recent example. He was brought on to help us defend a lead. We defended the lead, but it wasn’t any thanks to him as the ball was coming straight back down our end every time it went up the field. Now, I also know that Edozie and Djenepo are a bit crap. But, for now they are Southampton players. They are two options and two better options than Elyounoussi and they’d have given the Brentford players a lot more to think about than what we offered up last night. Heck, they’d at least win free kicks and that’s our best scoring opportunity at the moment, while opposition defenders take the ball off Elyounoussi with ease. You get nothing from not taking any gambles and this shit risk averse football that we play is leaving us rooted to the bottom of the league table.

Need to appoint an attack minded manager in the summer. Selles is safety first and it will be even more dour to watch us play sideways football against Rotherham. Adkins set us up to win every game, we were the highest scorers in the league in 2011-12 and that's what we need.

We lost the game before kick off. Unforgiveable to start Diallo and Elyounoussi in any fixture after being here for 27 league matches, let alone a fixture of this importance. The one winnable fixture of the three this week. Diallo's comfortably the worst central midfielder in the league. Can't make a simple pass and gives up possession every time, meaning we had no control of the game in the first half. Whilst, Elyounoussi is a trier, but he can't move. Our passes to feet weren't working, so when we did try to pass into the space on the side that Sulemana wasn't on, Brentford were just mopping it up as neither Elyounoussi or Adams have any legs. I guess Edozie and Djenepo were too forward thinking for our manager, as even though they do lose possession more often than not, Elyounoussi also does, but also doesn't create any excitement either. Too many sideways safety passes that gets you nowhere against Premier League defenders. I made a joke in the week, but how Toney continues to play after admitting to 200+ betting offences, only the FA knows. Best bit of the match was Bednarek giving him a bit after he left a boot in on Bazunu towards the end of the match. KWP going off injured was shit. He should've also been brought off straight away after going down, don't know why we kept him on for a few extra minutes. Nathan Jones' son looked crap. Can't carry the ball and just hits the ball and hopes for the best, even when he hoofed what should have been a simple pass down the line to Walcott. Ref was shit. Predicted it on Sunday, we've been false dawn football club this season. Only show up against the big boys.

Time for Toney to finally be banned from playing football, I reckon.

Very good result and performance to boot. Only complaint we can really have is that we didn't take all 3, which I wasn't even thinking of prior to kick off. Almost exactly a month ago we were playing against a 10 man Wolves team with a goal advantage at home and lost 2-1. We were by far the worst team in the league, had no fight in us and were sinking without a whimper. Now, we're fighting again and that's the main thing. We're fighting at the right time, while the likes of Leicester, Palace and Forest after a little resurgence are struggling when time is running out. Yes, we could have scored today and a better team would have, but we also had to get through Varane, Martinez and De Gea, who are all playing at the top of their game, barring last week and currently up there with the best. Shaw's back to his best also and Wan-Bissaka is known for being one of the better defensive full-backs. Their strength is their defence, while Rashford is in the best form of his career and scoring everything, which we stopped today. One thing that always leaves me perplexed is how Walcott's technical ability has diminished almost over night. He's lost the explosive pace he had, but I always felt he was a bit underrated for his actual footballing ability at Arsenal. It was only 2017 when he hit 19 goals in 37 appearances in all comps (10 in 28 in the league) and some of the goals he did score were of a high quality. But, today, nothing fell for him. The header, the 1 v 1 and the failed through ball on the counter to JWP. You expect a player to lose pace, etc. as they get older, but he's not playing like a player who spent 13 years at Arsenal and won 47 England caps. But, ah well, suppose his footballing brain is still good and he's better than a lot of our other number 10s who can't even work a chance. Key thing now is that we give a similar performance against Brentford in midweek. We've had plenty of false dawns this season, beating Chelsea twice, beating City in the cup and then following it with an amateur performance where the players don't look like they've seen each other before. We need to make this the start of a good run now, up the Saints!

Was against Jorginho at Chelsea.

Now that's a depressing stat!

Been banned from Fratton Park three times this season and six matches in total. https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/football/portsmouth-fc/john-westwood-banned-for-third-time-this-season-as-portsmouth-fc-fanatics-handbell-gesture-to-friend-caught-on-ifollow-4032417 You'd struggle to find someone dimmer than him.

Van Dijk having a shocker.

Not quite another game and I haven't watched much of MotD over recent years for obvious reasons, but Lineker's not presenting this weekend, or the foreseeable and Shearer and Wright have both said they aren't doing it without Lineker. Could be the beginning of an end of another footballing era.