Wes Tender

Were his games harder? OK, Pochettino had Everton, United, City and Liverpool, but Adkins had Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. At the bottom of the table, Pochettino had Wigan and QPR, whereas Adkins had Reading and Villa. Credit to Pochettino for winning those matches against City and Liverpool, whereas Adkins drew against Arsenal and Chelsea, but Pochettino drew and lost against those two bottom teams, whereas Adkins beat Reading and Villa. Granted though that despite Pochettino's disadvantage in coming in fresh to a new team and with the language and cultural difficulties, there wasn't much to separate the results between those 8 games each.

Why judge it on points per game when Adkins total would be based on a considerably longer period? Also, that would not take into account the difficult fixture start he had and the notably significant absence of Cork and the increasing development of the prowess of Shaw, to introduce two factors affecting him but not Pochettino. Anyway, surely league position also takes into account how other teams get on, doesn't it? If you are to judge it on points per game, then the fairest way of doing that would be to compare Adkins last 8 games against Pochhettinos first eight. On that basis, Adkins had 2 wins, 4 draws and 2 losses, therefore 10 points, whereas Pochettino had 2 wins, 3 draws and 3 losses, a total 9 points.

It's really too early to form a vaild opinion either way in my opinion. The way I see it hasn't changed, as originally my reaction was that Adkins had us in 15th position when he departed, so unless Pochettino gets us higher than that, what was the point in bringing him in? Currently, we are a position lower.

As the money would be provided so generously by you, I'd put it on them going down, as those odds would give a better return if that happened. I'd have nothing to lose, would I? If you allowed me to place it on either West Ham or Manchester United (being as how they are as likely as each other to go down -Trademark CB Fry), I'd put it on United staying up, but unfortunately the bookies wouldn't give odds on that, even before the start of the season.

Did I get under your skin? You sound mighty annoyed. Diddums

When you've got yourself into a hole, the best advice that you could take, is to stop digging. Several people have given sensible, intelligent reasons why West Ham were currently (at that time) far more likely than Man Utd to go down. Irrefutable amongst them was the fact that Man Utd were probably safe at that time, whereas West Ham were not. And as your understanding of the English language appears to be so lacking, I will point out once again that the reverse analogy of West Ham being as likely to end up champions as Man Utd was not my opinion, but an illustration of the stupidity of your thought processes that I thought that would be within your capability. Finishing TOP ONE is very different to finishing TOP SEVENTEEN? What the f*ck are you going on about? Top one against bottom three is surely what you meant to say, but then again, who knows what you mean to say.

Stop trying to deflect attention away from the crass stupidity of your comment, which everybody knows is the reason for this thread when they read the title. Here is a reminder of what you said:- 13th January Quote CB Fry: As for the other quote from me, here it is in context:- So you see, it wasn't an opinion of mine. It was riduculing you, not something that difficult to achieve. If you like, I'll also quote all the others on that thread who thought you were the bellend.

http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-4-southampton-1-1-4906489 Scraping the bottom of the barrel or what? Dredging up a victory for the blue phew from eight years ago, just to comfort themselves on past glories when the weekend saw us beat Liverpool comprehensively, whereas they struggled to get a draw against third division Doncaster. Treasure the memories, Skates, because you lot aren't going to be seeing the likes of it again in your lifetimes.

So he can accept that we are likely to concede goals with our high pressing game and that is OK. But he says that there is no excuse for conceding goals when the whole team is defending behind the ball. Really? A lot of the goals conceded by teams with even the best defences are from situations akin to pinball and in those situations there is not a lot that anybody can do about them. Attempted last ditch clearances can easily become own goals as somebody sticks a leg out more in hope than expectation, or the ball cannons off a player from either team. There is always the possibility when players feel that they have not been guilty of poor defending in situations like that, that they will feel resentment towards the manager because the criticism is not totally justified. From what I've heard, Adkins' approach was the more likely to produce a positive response. If the reports are correct, he would have nothing said for 5 minutes as the players reflected on events. Then they would discuss how they could improve in the second half, Adkins highlighting 5 positives against one negative. I've seen plenty enough matches under him where we have come out in the second half with a much improved performance to indicate that it was an effective strategy. But what has not emerged from this report, is anything indicating that as well as the hair-dryer treatment, Pochettino is also capable of praising the players when they have performed well. That is surely a necessity and I don't think for a second that he doesn't do that too. On Saturday, the first half performance warranted at least some praise, because we played exceptionally well. So why couldn't it be calm praise for all the good things and an expression of regret that we let our concentration slip in thr last few minutes, rather than him being Mr Angry?

Davis coming on for Ramirez was particularly effective and a sound tactical change to counter Rogers bringing on Lucas. Ramirez had been good up until then, but we tightened up the midfield from then onwards. That second half, for all the talk from Rogers about how they played better than they had in the first, frankly I was amazed at how we pinned them into their half for large periods of the game. Every time they ventured forward, they risked losing the ball to us and having us surge forward again. I think that after a while in that second half, they just ran out of ideas on how to break us down.

We have several candidates for a future young England team to replace the ageing has-beens, But if Hodgson follows form from his predecessors, he will ignore those players because we are an unfashionable provincial club without the fan support of the glory teams. For every player he includes from Southampton, he will have to select one less from those teams and risk the ire from all of the plastics who follow them, including those in the media. Because those glory teams are filled with foreign imports, you would think that the chances of selecting players from the unfashionable likes of us, Wigan and Swansea etc. would be increased. But it means little that our players might actually be better than the English players in the glory teams, because they are largely under the radar until we make the likes of City, Arsenal, Liverpool, United, Chelsea look ordinary by beating them regularly.

A match where there were 9s and 10s from our players all over the pitch and this is reflected in the spread of votes from us for Man of the Match and having two players in the team of the week. Quite the best football I've seen from us at home all season and doubly enjoyable because of the calibre of the opposition. The ground was packed to the rafters and the joint was rocking, helped by an early goal of class from Schneiderlin. A bit of fortune for the second from Lambert's deflected free kick and the atmosphere turned to euphoria and a deathly hush descended over the Liverpool fans, who had imagined that they only needed to turn up to gain an easy three points from poor old relegation strugglers Southampton. It seems that they and Rogers had badly underestimated us. Rogers should have known that Pochettino would play his high pressing game, closing down their flair players like Suarez and Gerrard to deny them the space to influence the match and yet you only have to read the Liverpool fans' forums to see the criticism of his team selection and tactics. At least many of them were prepared to give us credit for being the better team on the day, whereas Rogers dismisses that possibility and excuses them for having a bad day at the office. I confess to harbouring doubts at the team selection initially, with Puncheon again left out of the starting line-up making it being difficult on paper to fathom whether we were playing a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-4-2 and either way it looked as if there was an imbalance on the right wing. But the evidence of the actual play indicated that in any event it was very effective. In each area of the pitch we have decent partnerships forming. The back four is solid providing that it is Shaw at LB, Clyne at RB and whichever pairing of Hooiveld, Yoshida and Fonte, they have forged an understanding together. In midfield, Cork and Schneiderlin are immense for us. Just ahead of them, Lallana, Ramirez, Davies and Puncheon are all good options with Rodriguez increasingly looking to be the perfect foil to Lambert up front. Providing that we have this core of players available, we can be effective and not only survive this season, but maybe climb a place or two. If we suffer from injuries or suspensions to them, then I worry that their replacements will make us quite a bit less of a force to be reckoned with. Other relegation candidates will have looked at our matches against Liverpool and Chelsea and harboured expections of them being able to catch up a few points on us. Their disappointment not only on our win, but the style of it, must be a grave disappointment to them and a massive psychological boost to us. We can approach the Chelsea match now more confident of a result against them, knowing also that we were the team who came back to earn a draw away from a 2 goal deficit, something that others had failed to achieve for some considerable time. It is still too early to predict how the remainder of the season will pan out and whether we will avoid relegation. If we continue to play like that, we should be OK, provided that we don't revert to type and beat the top teams, only to surrender meekly to the lower teams, which ironically is exactly what some of the Liverpool fans accuse their team of, having lost to us.

Give me your address, Barry, and I'll treat you to some incontinence nappies. This peeing yourself seems to be becoming more and more frequent. What size are you?

The Daily Fail reckon that Fox is fit and will make a comeback to the team together with Davis NO! Fox plays best as Left Back in the changing room. Liverpool would have a field day against his so-called defending.

There haven't been any posts on the thread subject for several pages now. It might as well be moved to the Muppet Show for all the relevance that it has now, compared to when it started. Even then it was only a rehash of a previous thread that also quickly degenerated into juvenile playground stuff.

I have to admit that when it comes to pure comedy, you are indeed the master. Tell us that one about West Ham and Man Utd again. As I recall, that was comedy gold and you had several people rolling in the aisles.

What an idiotic tweet from a twitter tw*t.

"Pompey aim to crush Southampton side" http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/sport/pompey/pompey-aim-to-crush-southampton-side-1-4887866 Imagine my disappointment to find that this is just a battle of the big girls' blouses! And note the first line:- The members of the Skate team are Ladies (ha ha ha!) whereas those from Southampton are just Women. Surely those fat tattooed slags from Paulsgrove don't qualify to be called Ladies? And as for bragging rights, is this the best that they can come up with? The possibility that their women can better our women in a man's game? How are your men's team doing, Skates?

Is English your second language?

My tongue is firmly in my cheek on both replies.

But surely it will be to our benefit if Adkins went to Reading or Villa, as Pochettino is the better manager and would beat Adkins' team. Or otherwise why would we have appointed him?

So this tribunal is a total waste of time, because you know for a fact that Cortese is attempting to shaft Adkins by not coughing up what he is entitled to in his contract. Therefore it should only take the adjudicator a few minutes to reach a decision, because he will have read the brief beforehand and the terms of the contract will be crystal clear. I really don't know therefore why the Club will bother defending it in court, as they are so plainly in the wrong. Any who express the opinion that there is a possibility that things aren't as black and white as you paint them is naturally a bell end. How dare they attempt to be even-handed and give the benefit of the doubt to Cortese. After all, he is the devil incarnate, whereas Adkins is such a nice guy that the rights and wrongs of the matter can't be anything other than the conclusion that you have leapt to.

:lol:

This will be Pekingese dogs, right?