'It’s something we are aware of': Danny Cowley relief at finally resolving glaring Portsmouth weakness

Frustratingly, for 21 League One matches, Danny Cowley’s men had failed to unlock their scoring potential from corners.

Yet, in the 77th minute of Saturday’s encounter with Morecambe, Miguel Azeez’s flag kick from the left was headed home by an unmarked Connor Ogilvie.

It sealed a 2-0 Fratton Park triumph to lift the Blues to eighth in the table, stretching their unbeaten league record to nine matches.

The Blues netted from a corner in the Papa John’s Trophy this season, with Ellis Harrison registering against AFC Wimbledon.

However, such moments had curiously been absent from their league campaign – until Saturday.

Cowley told The News: ‘It’s something we are aware of. We are always aware of what we can do well and the areas we need to keep trying to improve.

‘I think we’ve actually had some good corners (this season) and caused some opponents some problems.

‘We scored against Crewe when John Marquis was at the back post, which was disallowed, while there have been lots of goal-line clearances and we’ve won a lot of first contacts.

‘But we haven’t quite turned our hard work into goals and it’s always something which has been a big part of our teams.

‘To do that you need the quality of delivery, the aerial prowess, and then you need some clever routines.

‘It’s something we have been working hard at, although it probably doesn’t show. Certainly we haven’t got there as we would have liked.

‘But when things don’t go as well as we’d like, it's about continuing to work tremendously hard and knowing if we do that then we’ll find a way.

‘We spend hours as a coaching team looking at opponent set-pieces and knew that Morecambe had front and back zones, so released they wouldn’t mark the player on the goalkeeper, which meant we had that player free.

‘Now we’ve scored one, hopefully that will give us a good run because Sean Raggett owes us at least five!’

Intriguingly, regular corner taker Shaun Williams was taken off duties mid-way through the first-half on Saturday.

Instead Arsenal loanee Azeez was handed the honours – a decision afterwards explained by Cowley.

He added: ‘We were just protecting Willo really.

‘Shaun is aged 35 and played 270 minutes in a week. He’s done unbelievably well and we just felt that dragging him out for every corner and then getting back to the middle would have been even tougher for him.

‘And also sometimes we want the inswinger because Morecambe didn’t mark our player on their goalkeeper.

‘I have no qualms about Miguel taking corners, technically he can do that and has the delivery. He’s got loads of good ball strike.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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