Gaffer: Forget Portsmouth man of the match, nobody deserved it against Accrington

Calmed down yet?

It was a very poor performance, our worst of the season, we were outplayed from start to finish.

There is no way we can have complaints about Accrington winning, they deserved it, we should have been 3-0 down at half-time.

Even our goal came out of the blue, while Tom Naylor playing at the back instead of midfield backfired, we were outmuscled massively in the middle.

Paul Downing must be thinking what the hell he has to do to get into this team

Anyone worthy of man of the match?

A group of us sat on the train on the way back trying to come up with a man of the match – but couldn’t think of anyone.

Maybe there’s Ronan Curtis with his goal and Craig MacGillivray with an excellent first-half save, but they are the only two you can say contributed.

Nobody can look in the mirror and say they played well against Accrington.

We were terrible – and hopefully it’s a one-off.

Can changing the whole back four be used as an excuse?

It could, but there are still experienced players in there, these aren’t 17-year-olds.

Sean Raggett is short of confidence, while it is the first time I’ve really seen James Bolton play and he seems as bad as the rest of them.

There can’t be any excuses, even if it was the first time that back four has been together, some of those goals were dreadful.

We haven't replaced Nathan Thompson, we were never going to replace Matt Clarke with Paul Downing and Raggett, and now it looks like we need a left-back in January.

And your day got worse didn’t it?

Well, a swan flew into the overhead power lines at Carstairs, meaning we didn’t get home until midnight.

So for three hours we were stranded at Preston station, having a few pints and trying to get our heads around what a great day we’d had!

The Preston players were also there, among them David Nugent and Andre Green, heading to London for their Christmas party.

Still, our next planned match is against Bolton on January 18, which we attend in hope rather than expectation. We’re Pompey fans aren’t we.

Craig MacGillivray 5

James Bolton 4

Sean Raggett 4

Tom Naylor 4

Anton Walkes 4

Ross McCrorie 4

Ben Close 4

Marcus Harness 5

John Marquis 4

Ronan Curtis 5

Ellis Harrison 4