The season began with a visit from 15 blokes from the South Coast, 11 of whom were apparently professional footballers and had played in the Premier League last season, and 4 who they had found en route. Surprisingly given their financial situation they even arrived in a coach and not a mini-bus.
Our team showed a couple of surprises, with Dave Cameron making a debut at centreback and Mrs Doyle returning to add some bite to the midfield. Returning heroes Lee "I'll dominate the centre circle" Carsley, and the Chef himself made us all nostalgic for when we were a bit better, while a debut for Lucas King of Scrabble provided a focus for a potential long ball game.
Within three minutes, our new freescoring striker emerged, scuffing a shot from 4 yards out through the Pompey keeper's legs. Take a bow Freddy, a man who has succumbed to Aidy's mind games and rediscovered the form he had before he scored 12 in 91 games in a skyblue shirt.
Then it got all comfortable. Portsmouth defenders kicked the ball into touch a lot, passed badly to each other, and played through balls to Vivienne. Nobody passed to David Nugent (he played for England once), so he had a series of strops and tantrums to show how much he cared. And that bloke with the tattoos and the bell made a lot of noise in the away end.
Second half, Scrabble flicks on nicely, Tinker clips in a cross with "head me in" written all over it, and Freddy soars like a soaring thing to power in his second goal.
And that was about it. Apart from Utaka getting the loudest booing from his own fans that the Ricoh has ever witnessed. And Platt getting a home substitute debut, and getting involved a bit - jury is out on him still.
So, a good solid comfortable win against a team who will be in the bottom three come May.
What did we learn?
Freddy likes Aidy.
Carsley does a solid job but doesn't run very far.
Doyle still kicks people.
The Chef is in need of a run of games to rediscover his form.
Cameron looked very solid.
Keogh likes to get forward, cut inside and shoot.
Bell looked good again.
Scrabble was promising.
McIndoe must be leaving soon.
Onwards to game two.
No comments:
Post a Comment