Gaffer For A Day: I have never heard a Portsmouth away crowd as angry as that
Gaffer For A Day, Mike Head, aged 67 from Denmead assesses Pompey’s 6-1 defeat at QPR...
Who was man of the match?
The final whistle! Thank goodness it was over at that point, it was painful. We just weren’t up for it.
We need the international break to reset, that team was not playing with confidence. I saw them against Derby on Monday and there was a smell of relegation about the team. On Saturday it was a big game, so to lose 6-1 was awful.
It’s such a hard call whether we’ll stay up, in some ways we are relying on other teams. We are more than capable of winning games, but we have to win them. We should have ground out a result at QPR, but we didn’t.
Last season I was confident we would stay up - this season I cannot call it.
What about Ebou Adams playing as a number 10?
Mous has looked at the game and said “I think I will do this” - and it didn’t work. He’s trying to do something different, but it didn’t work for us.
I am more concerned that he didn’t switch it after a while. The mistake was not to change it after 20-25 minutes, when you could see it’s not working.
After 10 minutes, we were still in it, despite being 1-0 down. John Swift’s stupid mistake and QPR scored, but we couldn’t get back into it - and Mousinho still stuck with Adams as the 10.
What did you make of the reaction from the away support?
I was a bit annoyed when some turned on the players because I would never do that. As soon as we went 1-0 down, the fans turned straight away - and that sums up the frustration of where we’re at.
People were saying before the game I would take a 1-0 win or I would take a point. So to be 3-0 down after 28 minutes, people couldn’t believe it.
I have never heard an away crowd as angry as that. At home you get fans having a go at the players, but barely ever away from Fratton Park, they are always behind the team.
However, some quickly turned on Saturday when normally we are always behind the team. Then again, there was absolutely no inspiration from that team performance.
Why do you think Pompey are in this relegation battle?
I am going to play the injury card. We started the season okay and then the injuries hit. Mousinho made some changes against QPR, but he’s hamstrung with his squad.
Having said that, Saturday was down to a lack of passion, our players were just not getting into the game.
We have to put the ball in the net. We have plenty of shots, we’re just not clinical enough, which has been a problem for a while.
QPR took us on, had a couple of touches and they got a goal. We play around too much and the keeper saves it. Story of our season.
Nicolas Schmid - 3
Terry Devlin - 3
Regan Poole - 3
Conor Shaughnessy - 3
Connor Ogilvie - 3
Marlon Pack - 3
John Swift - 3
Adrian Segecic - 2 (Colby Bishop - 3)
Ebou Adams - 3
Milli Alli - 2
Jacob Brown - 2