Gaffer: Sorry Rasmus Nicolaisen, you haven't shown you deserve to be Portsmouth first choice

Gaffer for a Day, Rory Murphy, aged 51 from Cosham, surveys Pompey’s 6-1 victory over King’s Lynn in the FA Cup...
Goalscorers and centre-half partners Rasmus Nicolaisen at the final whistle after Pompey's 6-1 win over King's Lynn. Picture: Joe PeplerGoalscorers and centre-half partners Rasmus Nicolaisen at the final whistle after Pompey's 6-1 win over King's Lynn. Picture: Joe Pepler
Goalscorers and centre-half partners Rasmus Nicolaisen at the final whistle after Pompey's 6-1 win over King's Lynn. Picture: Joe Pepler

What are your thoughts on that performance?

It was a really professional display, with plenty of positives. Let’s face it, it was a no-win situation for Pompey against a non-league team.

Our intensity was really good, it wasn’t a bad game to watch and King’s Lynn also deserve plenty of credit.

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Having scored after two minutes, you may thought we would steamroller them, but at 1-0 down they came back into it and tried to play football, causing us a few problems.

When Tom Naylor put us 2-0 up, though, that was it. The quality of the goals was something else, pretty much all of them were decent for different reasons.

You mentioned about the quality of the goals

Naylor couldn’t hit a barn door with a banjo for a couple of years, now he’s on fire.

Perhaps he has been given a bit more freedom and is able to arrive late on the edge of the box, with the majority of this season’s goals coming from that area.

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He will not score a better goal than that in his career. In the old days, the ball would have got stuck in the back of the stanchion at the top of the goal!

Jordy Hiwula’s strike was excellent too. He made it look easy and just needs a little run of involvement, we aren’t blessed with finishers.

King’s Lynn couldn’t have done their homework on us, though. We put in a deep corner every week and managed to finally score from one through Sean Raggett.

What are your thoughts on Rasmus Nicolaisen?

He looked aggressive and took his goal well against King’s Lynn, but as a pairing with Raggett they didn’t look comfortable at times.

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Raggett and Jack Whatmough are much more settled as a pair and have to be regarded as first choice.

Nicolaisen looks decent enough, but doesn’t appear to be so much better than the other two to warrant playing ahead of them.

Scoring a goal from a corner against a non-league side doesn’t make you Franco Baresi. He needs to do more.

You can’t get too restless being one of three centre-halves, especially with Whatmough not going to be playing every game.

Who was your man of the match?

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It’s Marcus Harness for me. He glues the team together – when he plays well, we play well.

He’s simply the best player we’ve got. I think Harness is excellent and knits that front four together brilliantly.

It’s noticeable that he’s much more consistent this season and has played a bit further up the pitch getting him on the ball.

I also thought Cam Pring was very solid, winning a penalty and getting a corner assist for Nicolaisen’s goal. He has been a decent addition.

Alex Bass 8

Callum Johnson 7

Sean Raggett 6

Rasmus Nicolaisen 7

Cam Pring 9

Ryan Williams 7

Tom Naylor 9

Ben Close 7

Ronan Curtis 8

Marcus Harness 9

Ellis Harrison 6

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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