Gaffer for a day: Leyton Orient 0 Pompey 1
Back to winning ways then.
Saturday was almost like a champions performance in terms of not playing brilliantly well but grinding out an away win.
If we string a few 1-0 wins together with not particularly free-flowing beautiful football then that doesn’t bother me, especially on our travels.
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Hide AdWe are not going to score four or five goals a game away from Fratton Park, even if Orient weren’t up to much.
To get that victory we had to do the absolute minimum, which is fine by me, I have no problem with that.
Although we should have gone into stoppage time without any worries.
Who stood out most for Pompey?
I don’t think anyone played particularly brilliantly, but Christian Burgess was solid and their strikers never got a sniff.
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Hide AdHe also scored – and Amine Linganzi missed a far easier free header in the first half.
We defended so much better than in previous weeks, particularly Burgess, who gave what we saw from him last season.
Apart from a mess when Alan Dunne attempted to lob David Forde, I was never scared we would lose our lead.
You’ve given a very low mark to Michael Doyle.
He looks so far off the pace at the moment, he needs a little break.
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Hide AdHe looks the 35 years he is and, irrespective of being captain, requires a bit of time out to recharge his batteries.
Gary Roberts looked shattered after an hour and things weren’t coming off for him, while it was news to me that Carl Baker was playing.
I am not particularly worried about any of them, though.
What did you make of Kyle Bennett’s recall?
He was the only one of our attacking midfielders who looked capable of making things happen.
Admittedly, Bennett went down theatrically in the box when he dummied their player, but I still thought it was a penalty.
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Hide AdAll the amateur pundits around me were accusing Bennett of not running enough, of being a passenger.
But I overheard Orient fans afterwards describing him as a ‘baller’ and the ‘League Two Neymar’!
My Pompey ratings
David Forde 6
Gareth Evans 6
Christian Burgess 8
Matt Clarke 7
Enda Stevens 7
Michael Doyle 5
Amine Linganzi 7
Carl Baker 5
Gary Roberts 5
Kyle Bennett 7
Conor Chaplin 6