Pompey v Crawley: Gaffer for a day

I would like us to continue with the 4-2-3-1 but the ball has to move a lot quicker.

The issues we’ve had is we are great at possession, yet too slow.

It means against two lines of four in League Two we cannot break them down.

We also don’t get the ball in early enough to whoever is playing centre-forward.

A couple of times against Carlisle it was fine but otherwise we do not move it fast enough.

I don’t believe we have to play 4-4-2 or wing-backs, the players we’ve got suit the style, it’s just about increasing the tempo.

On the back of Michael Smith’s hat-trick, I would like to see him in the starting line-up.

My only concern is there seems to be an undercurrent of anti-Smith feeling among Pompey fans.

I don’t understand it myself, from what I have seen he is better than Curtis Main and I would play him.

In defence I would have gone with Adam Barton alongside Christian 
Burgess but he has now been sold.

I am not sure whether Matt Clarke is up to it having played only 60 minutes this season, so I would keep Tom Davies there.

Drew Talbot has got better as the season has gone on, Carl Baker had a great pre-season but gone off the boil, while Noel Hunt is a massive find for us but is not a lone striker.

I would put Gareth Evans on the right as his delivery from the wing is pretty good, with Kyle Bennett on the other flank.

You know what you’ll get with Bennett and at home you can afford to gamble a bit in attack.

Providing we score early on to settle the fans down, I think we can win this by two or three goals.

I know Crawley have had a decent start but then so did Colchester.