Gaffer: Calling for Kenny Jackett's head won't do anything positive - but it'd be hard to defend boss if Portsmouth lose to Southend

Nobody has been happy with the start of the season. It has been a bit disappointing but there has been visible improvement recently.

Dropping points at the end of games needs to change but Oxford had the joint-best recent record in the division before Saturday and Pompey had six shots on target to their one.

Usually, a draw would be a good result but what’s happened previously, a point wasn’t quite enough.

There are definitely encouraging signs there but we need to start taking our chances and stop conceding so late on.

I expected us to be in the play-offs at this stage of the season, with the hope we’d be in the automatic promotion places.

It’s easy to point the finger at the manager. You only have to look down the road, they sacked a manager when they were eighth in the Premier League and had got to a cup final – they’ve been battling relegation ever since.

Changing managers doesn’t necessarily solve the problem when the issues are a bit more in-depth.

People think I’m more behind Kenny Jackett than I am. If we lose to Southend then it would be hard to defend him.

I’m not as blindly loyal to Jackett as people would believe but the problem hasn’t been purely from him and things are improving.

I also believe the owners have made their point they’re behind him. Calling for a manager’s head isn’t going to do anything positive at the moment.

The Eisners have said what they’ve said, are shrewd businessmen and are not going to change their mind.

I understand the chants and people’s frustrations but there have been improvements. It’s always disappointing to concede late but we played some of our best football against an in-form Oxford.

At the start of the season, we were always going to miss Matt Clarke and took us a while to get settled.

But in the past few games, Sean Raggett has stepped up and we’ve got the back four settled now.

I’d make one change against Southend, bringing in Andy Cannon for Ben Close.

We know how good Close is given what he did last season. His goals made him stand out at the start of this campaign but he did more than just that.

But Cannon has a bit more energy, gets forward a bit more and creative – another thing we are lacking at the moment.