Another deeply disappointing and very predictable outcome. It's no wonder really. We are down on options and down on capability, now playing like the found-out, Championship evel team since the first kick of the ball versus Villa after the lockdown. Aside from small spells of looking like we can do it - Spurs, Chelsea, Man U ... we've been dismal and beaten for ages. Step forward Mr Wilder. This is your shout.
Fulham play a game full of chance, error and some mistakes. It's still 'just-up-from-the-Championship-dice-shaking' but fuck me don't they do it well? White shirt - white shirt - white shirt - white shirt, it is no wonder they out possessed us all fucking game. When we got it it was panic stations and look for the players that weren't there, so pump it long to McPub, the telegraph pole we bought for twenty odd million. Fulham however played it into the spaces we weren't, namely our ineffective, consistently overran midfield. Wilder thought he'd give Norwood a break this eek and start with the frankly useless Lundstram in CM and Basham RM but it was abundantly clear Lundstram is worse than Norwood in that berth and the only player who could fill the requirement was Ampadu. So the swap out happened. It didn't make much difference. The return of Jimmy Fleck from hospital and Ampadu basically covering for Lundstram too meant we were simply - once again - passed around and beaten all ends up in the middle of the park by Loftus-Cheek, Zambo and Reed feeding the dangermen in front of them or just running on past. They are so ineffective, that our only outlet is to pump it long and readers, tonight I counted one header out of about eleven or twelve which went to a green shirt (Fleck, first half) So why fucking do it? Oppositions just know that when he's on the pitch it's 'back to Ramsdale, BOOM! BOING! Thank-you-very-much'. There's a statistic that in our first half, our team
'DIDN'T TOUCH THE BALL IN THE OPPOSITION'S PENALTY AREA IN THE FIRST HALF'
Just hoist that in for a moment. Our strikeforce at the moment is an expensive lanky foul-claimer, a stout, 35 year old veteran, another veteran who kinda plays his own mellow game against the opposition, Billy Whizz with flip-flops on and what looks like a 14 year old schoolkid. Oh, and some fucking fraudulent footballer more keen on fast-food than fast-goals. And we play a system which has three inept individuals who are there to impose and make a difference on the outcome of the game in the middle of the park and a variable backline leaking injuries and confidence. And we can't even get a Sheffield United boot on the ball in 45 minutes, against what will be, one of our main rivals next season for getting back into the Premier League. It's dogshit, with mayo-fucking-nnaise on it.
Second half the changes, even when forced through losing Basham made no difference, in fact it made it worse. Okay, Stevens broke through but did you actually think he'd coolly pick his spot and drill the ball in the far corner? Did anyone think that Norwood's frankly brilliant cross would result in the net bulging? Nah. We are resorting to whinging about what was to me an obvious penalty as some sort of safe mattress to land on to spare our deep seated embarrassment and disappointment at being, once again, rolled over in the flour and batter, and dropped in the oil. We didn't do anything in that 97 minutes to suggest we deserved a result. We were simply crap, again.
Lastly, anyone deluded enough to think that armed with what they think is a Championship set of title-winning galacticos next season needs to have a big old whaft of the freshly ground beans. Playing like we did tonight, against one of our rivals, we're very likely to end up disappointed. We need to shed the deadwood, pay off their mistakenly-signed contracts, and start buying playmakers and goalscorers and play like we did in 2018-19. Right now we are a billion miles away from that and we have a hefty amunt of those players still pulling on a shirt, and the same management team. Blame COVID, narrow margins and 'lack of confidence' all you want, but this is down to them and Wilder, Our team's failures is their fault, and certainly not ours.
Ramsdale 7/10: Thought he had a better game. Good, confident stops and no fuck ups. Distribution was billy bollocks at times though, with most of them going via Pubby's melon or into empty space
Baldock 6/10: Nice to se him back. Aggressive and committed. Hope Furious is one of the players he especially intends to keep next season
Ampadu 5/10: Still working his ticket and hoping for home, back to Chelsea. Better than Lundstram in CM but horrific fuck up with Lookman for their goal
Jagielka 6.5/10: Poor old feller. Shows proper PL defensive class at times with key interceptions and headers, but at times, because he's 52, he's easy to skip round
Bryan 6/10: Didn't think he did too bad. Had his hands full at times with the likes of Cavaliero and Maja, but it was a passable display
Stevens 3/10: Shit finish when clean through. His game was proper Pompey too.
Basham 6/10: You know you'll get 100% out of him, even if RCM is not his bag. And tonight it wasn't, because he had no support or connectivity and was largely firefighting in the centre of the park, trying to get a way forward. Obviously better when CW switched him to RCB
Lundstram 1/10: Very poor, ineffective and frankly switched off performance in both positions. Can't wait for him to fuck off, to be honest. He's gone from Nicky Montgomery to Michael Doyle, in fact, Doyle was possibly better, in honesty
Fleck 4/10: Mysteriously back from hospital when everyone feared the worst. Was this John or was this Jimmy? You decide. I though like Lundstram, there as nothing to show that did anything to make us have an effect. One good free kick in the first half, that was it.
McBurnie 2/10: Pretty abject and no real positive comments. In fact I am wondering why I am giving him '2'. I suppose it's just in case he comes on here full of rage and gets stuck in to me again. '2' is slightly more 'respectful' than '0', I suppose. Tonight he was a fucking phone mast which every green shit bounced the ball off to surrender possession. If you think, with this system and tactics, he will be 'amazing' and 'rip the championship to bits' next season then you need a fucking terror shake. Unless we paly a different system and use him as a proper target man, second ball for striker #2, he's redundant. Twenty million.
Sharp 2/10: As ever, Billy gets a low mark because Billy got no service. You can't give him 7/10 for simply unning after the ball and hooking a cross over the top
Norwood 4/10: Typical weak performance. Two corners - first ma. Next one far post (okay, it found Bryan, but it needs to go into the triangle drawn from penalty area to posts, Gets an additional point for that superlative cross in that Sharp spooned, but I guess that's it for this season. All his fanboys will be hoping he gets kept on next season on that on single flash in the pan, when for the rest of the game he was simply passed around and bullied.
Bogle 7/10: Immediately invoked and should have started in RCM in my humble opinion. He poses far more attacking and positional guile than anyone on the pitch, actually and if any signing Wilder has made has proven himself worthy of the fee, it's him. The goalkeeper challenge was a penalty IMHO. Bogle touched the ball first and the keeper cracked his shins. I think the shysters in Stockley had given up on us by that time and were parked on the pot sliding out a loaf of brown clay because I have no idea what the fuck they were looking at that didn't say 'foul'.
But big deal. We are shit. We lost. Again. I know people say 'you're negative' but where are the positives? There are none, are there. Wilder is like a fucking stuck record both on the field and off the field post match, his signings are failures and his team now patently not good enough for the higher echelons of English football. And if it were Adkins in charge, he'd have been burnt at the stake by now.
Fire away. I'm ready.
pommpey
