Saturday 10.30
It’s grey and miserable outside and things have got decidedly gloomy in connection with our team since the heady times of only a fortnight ago. Two defeats have sent us down towards the relegation zone and various alleged incidents off the pitch have soured the atmosphere. Defeat today is unthinkable. Portsmouth have spiralled down since Harry Redknapp’s departure and we must have a good chance of winning, though with Defoe and Crouch up against our defence I can’t see us keeping a clean sheet. Early news suggests that Fulop will play again, he had a bad game last week, but so did nearly everyone else, and hopefully he can rebuild his confidence. It looks like McCartney will be ruled out through injury.

Result? 2-1 to us.

The Match
There were five changes to last week’s starting line-up with Cisse and Murphy up front, memories of the winning goal against Spurs immediately came to mind, Collins coming in for the injured McCartney, Bardsley replacing Chimbonda and Reid for Tainio. I was happy about all of these, especially having Reid start a match, though sadly Kenwyne wasn’t among the subs. Even before I could get Century Radio on my laptop we’d taken the lead with Cisse scoring from Reid’s pass. On the quarter-hour we almost went two-up after a long-distance effort from Richardson hit the post after some great build-up play. Just afterwards James saved well from Cisse and the commentator said we were “scintillating” – I could just picture the Bonfire Night-related headline in the Football Echo. Well, it’s a nice contrast to last Saturday when we were very much a damp squib. Just before the half-hour mark Reid and Cisse combined well again but James saved well. Five minutes later Portsmouth had their first shot on target in the unlikely form of an overhead kick from Sol Campbell but they were getting back into it and our lead was looking fragile. There was a strange time-out when everyone stopped and stood around having a drink for a couple of minutes but this wasn’t reflected by a longer stoppage-time. I could hear the “Olés” going around the stadium while the commentator repeated that this was our best performance of the season.

Diouf came on for Murphy after the break but five minutes after the restart Belhadj equalized out of the blue with a great shot from twenty-five yards and everything switched round, with us looking wobbly for a while. With just under half an hour left we perked up a lot with Cisse bringing another good save from James and then getting the ball in the net only to be ruled slightly offside. Kanu replaced Crouch and it was still going end to end with both sides breaking quickly. With just under twenty minutes on the clock news came through that Hartlepool had fought back from 2-0 down to go ahead 3-2 and this chirped me up. Cisse was looking tired and I wondered if we should bring Healy on to try and snatch the winner. With around ten minutes left Healy replaced Reid and Leadbitter, Malbranque. We were getting caught offside a lot but I felt we could still get another one. Fulop did very well to save at the feet of Defoe when he looked like he was about to score with a few minutes left. Then just as three minutes of stoppage-time was being displayed Diouf conceded a penalty with a rash tackle and Defoe won the match.

So the unthinkable happened, even after our best display of the season in the first-half, and three defeats in a row takes some swallowing. I don’t know if we’re in the bottom three and for now I don’t want to.

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