Yep, pretend I didn't watch that and start again Saturday.Embarrassing,
You know what to do people.
Yearwood 7
Hutchinson 5
Theo 2
Everyone else 4
Would rather have stuck a load of the under 23’s out there. At least they might’ve looked like they gave half a ****.
I'm starting to wonder whether money, or the lack of it, is behind our lacklustre showing.Well, I've had better nights. Cold, miserable, soulless.
Nothing positive to say at all. It was over as a contest after 84 seconds. I don't think we had any tactics or shape. In fact, I'd go as far as saying we weren't overly bothered....
A shower of **** quite frankly.
Our Southend "Top Guns" best eleven got proper spanked by the pompey yoot, probably half of them havent even taken their GCSE's yet.
Our season is officially over, 10 points off the play off's.... 8 points of the relegation zone..... and we have all the consistency in form of the Mrs Mattito's Custard.
Currently Plymouth looks like a tough ask for 3 points on Saturday considering our current form and added injuries.
It may have been a much-changed Portsmouth team but they still had the likes of Burgess, Dennis, Wheeler, May, Green (who scored the winner on Saturday vs Norwich). So perhaps not the bunch of kids everyone will assume.
Was a very poor display though. Lacked tempo and urgency in the first half particularly, and we seemed to want to overplay the ball (which is a classic sign of a lack of confidence). As poor as we were it is only the Checkatrade Trophy, and by far the most significant moment of the evening was losing Taylor Moore. We have to pray that is not a bad one.
We tried lots of intricate stuff when we don't really have the players to do it. Bunn gave the ball away a lot as did Theo. Kightly was never in the game, Hyam looks like every game is a testimonial to him and his passing is not slick enough.
Positives were the performances of the young players. Yearwood was the best player we had and Hutchinson showed lots of energy when he came on. He seems to be bedding into first team football and that is a great sign. Elvis was always an outlet, some things came off for him and others didn't. Great to see Ted Smith back, he didn't have much to do but it will do him good to be back out there.
I don't care who they put out, that looked like a Portsmouth team on top of the world at the moment. Very confident and loads of self belief. Never looked in trouble. Great display by them, credit where credit is due. This wasn't a league game, but it looks like a real gap between the top few in the division and the rest this year. Big, big clubs like Sunderland and Portsmouth obviously they're going to have many more resources, but it is clear that with the money stretching everything out in football, it's not going to be long before it is very, very tough to break into that League One top 6 for a club like us.
A night to forget, fortunately it is a nothing game and Saturday is far more important. I trust CP will be handing out a tremendous bollocking and he will have them up for a huge game which we need to win to take one more step towards ending this cursed season still in League One, which considering our decimated squad, is not to be sniffed at.