Gaffer For A Day: Please no more signings on the cheap. Portsmouth's owners need to spend
Gaffer For A Day, Mark Harvey, aged 64 from Gosport, assesses Pompey’s 4-1 FA Cup defeat to Arsenal...
How did you view Pompey’s performance?
Normally, I wake up on match-days and I’m really excited and looking forward to it. On Sunday morning, though, I was very apathetic about the whole thing. I was just hoping we weren’t going to have an Exeter done to us.
What we then saw was Pompey having gone toe-to-toe with the top team in the country at the moment - and probably one of the top teams in Europe. It was outstanding.
Perhaps we scored too soon against Arsenal, but, at times in the first half, we were the better team.
Now we have to go to Sheffield Wednesday and get that win, then have a result at Watford. Four points out of those two games will see us pushing a little further up the league.
Who stood out for you?
Colby Bishop was my man of the match. He came back into the team following injury and looked totally refreshed, like he’d had a decent amount of time off.
Aside from the WWE wrestling which goes on every time the centre-half goes to challenge him, he did really well, winning quite a lot of headers and flick-ons, although we weren’t really following them through.
Up against two quality centre-halves, he showed he’s back to the Bishop we all know and his goal was a massive positive out of the game.
Hopefully that changes his season now and he gets a hat-trick against Sheffield Wednesday, four against Watford and then six against that lot from down the road!
What do you make of yet three more goals conceded from set-plays?
I think John is telling us one of his availability lies when he claims we practice them in training! I don’t think we actually do!
From what I understand, we look like we’re playing a zonal defence at corners and, with all the pushing and shoving, our players don’t get into the right positions.
Why don’t we do what Villa did against Tottenham on Saturday night? Put three men on the halfway line, then you've got more space and there won’t be as much pushing and shoving.
When Tony Adams came here all those years ago, one of the first things I remember him saying was to get players out of the box who aren’t going to do anything. Conor Chaplin’s never going to win a header, so what’s he doing in the box, apart from maybe standing on a post?
Get the people in there who can contribute to defending the corner and, when we did defend them, Conor Shaughnessy, Regan Poole and Marlon Pack were the ones winning the headers.
What are your hopes for the transfer window?
The owners are getting so much stick. I applaud what they are doing with the club, what they have done with Fratton Park over the last few years is superb, they have a great young manager, we’ve brought in some good players - but they need to spend.
We have bought some outstanding signings on the cheap, the likes of Nicolas Schmid, Conor Shaughnessy, Regan Poole. On the cheap.
We don’t need a 19-year-old from the Scottish Championship or someone from National South for the future, we need outstanding signings now.
If they really want to stay in this league, they’ll have to spend and we need two Rob Atkinson-type signings. I’d love an attacking midfielder, somebody who can play either in the two or in the 10, who’s really prepared to run at defenders.
I’m also hoping Colby has turned a corner so we don’t need to recruit somebody else to play up front. If you’re a half-decent striker, are you coming here to get 20 minutes at the end of the game? Probably not.
Josef Bursik - 6
Terry Devlin - 8
Conor Shaughnessy - 7
Regan Poole - 7
Zak Swanson - 8
Andre Dozzell - 6
Luke Le Roux - 4
Adrian Segecic - 6
Conor Chaplin - 7
Harvey Blair - 7 (Franco Umeh - 4)
Colby Bishop - 8