Gas / Pompey Match Day Thread

Bristol Rover's ?!?

Oh, come on Epping, please!

He's singularly possessed

Portsmouth will hit us hard from the start, if we can weather the first 30 mins without conceeding i'm hoping we can hold on for a point.

Tonight i continue to hope Daly and Hanlon hit it off and the rest have a good 'day' at the office.


A scenario.

Sign Joey Barton.
He signs Paddy Madden,transfer rules allowing.
Madden scores a few goals and has big positive effect on Daly,Hanlon and team.
Rovers stay up.

Portsmouth are allowed to rock up tonight and win 6-0. We have no divine right to win just because we are at home, because their manager is ill, because we didn't play Saturday, because we get the sacked manager uplift, because TW knows and signed all the players so they will do better for him.

The only thing to stop a 6-0 away win or even 1-0 is hard work, play for each other, play for your contracts, play for the next manager, do what you were bought to do, play your own game. Bob Paisley used to say they brought a player in to play how they saw them fitting into the team, that's it. Play simple, effective football.

Earn the right to play, make Portsmouth hate playing against Rovers, make them suffer, give their fans a bad day, make their team feel embarrassed, don't just roll over because you don't think you have the right to.lace their boots.

It's ok to win, it's ok to score, it's ok to foul, ok to shoot, ok to block and get the ball in your knackers, it's ok to try things in their half, be safe in ours. It's ok to hit row z from a clearance. It's ok to give your fans what they want.

What's not ok is lack of heart, lack of effort, leaving the ball for people, slowing down just before they shoot, not stopping the shot, not stopping the cross, being 2nd best 100% of the time, not giving 100% (not the same thing). Conceding to set pieces at all. Conceding at all.

But....

They are perfectly entitled to come to your ground and smash you 6-0, 12-0, I can't stop them, neither can TW, the only people who can is the 11 who start. The 11 who have earned the shirt and need to keep it because there are players who might want it more than you on the bench.

No one is more important than the 11 who start tonight. Forget Tony Craig, forget Joey Barton, forget Paul effing Tisdale, forget Ben Garner, forget John Marquis. If 8 out of the 11 play to their 100% we will win tonight, no doubt about it. We cannot afford less than this however.

Because we are allowed to win. Do we always want to be unlucky? You make your own luck. Earn it.

UTG

When you look at the board’s track record over the last year: Garner, Tisdale and now Barton each of those individuals is quite a bit different from the last suggesting that really, even the board don’t actually know what Bristol Rovers DNA is. It’s just a trite middle-management phrase to delude the hard of thinking amongst our fanbase that this is a club with a plan and a direction.

The only plan we have is “I want to play good football with young players who we sell for $$$$$ and who don’t cost us anyfin” written in crayon on a piece of paper because the person who wrote it couldn’t be trusted with pens. No idea how to actually go about implementing it

As for the game who knows. I wouldn’t be surprised if Widdrington steams into them And makes it clear that he has backed them to the hilt in the press and now they need to win at all costs to protect Widdribgton’s reputation.

2-1 to the Bristol Rover [sic]

0 - 4 tonight and perhaps Tisdale was right?
2 - 2 and perhaps the board were right?

Who knows? Isn't it awful going into every game with a sense of dread?

I thought 5 3 2?   It depends how you classify wing backs as midfield or defence.   But then you have Nicholson as part of front 3.   You might be right.  Which makes it similar to what Ben started this season with, that didn’t work and he changed it.  The wide players in a forward 3 not getting in game whilst it’s essentially a 2 in middle getting over run.  And full backs have wide player in front of them confusing their attacking movement.   
Even if it’s a 2 with Nicholson in hole floating, 5 2 1 2 we can say right now it’s still over run midfield madness.   

stronger would be a 4 with two midfield holders number 10 and 3 across front, because getting control of the middle of the board, least not ceding  control of middle of board is key.