Frustration and yellows aplenty but City grind out point at feisty Fratton

Yesterday at 04:10 AM

Fortunately, Championship points are still dished out based on the number of goals scored compared to your opponents, not artistic impression.

Had it been the latter, this Fratton footballing extravaganza would have delivered nil points all round. Not one for the purist. That’s for sure.

If the Sky Sports+ commentary team – whom it was widely accepted were borrowed for the night from Pompey TV – were to be believed, the only noteworthy discussion point of the whole evening was the ‘ghost goal’ scored by Connor Oglivie after our Angus had dome some early second-half flapping.

I guess they had a point—even a stopped clock… etc.

But my god, weren’t they painful?

Anyway, I suppose in their defence they had to talk about something and since very little of any discernible quality was occurring on the green stuff, they had to freestyle for all they were worth,

Perhaps research on the players you’re commentating on is passé in 2024?

It just feels like I need to blame someone for those two hours of my life that I’ll never get back, and it gets tiresome blaming the ref every game, even though Master Kitchen did his best impersonation of a finicky, whistle-happy official who managed by card.

The true heroes were, as ever, the magnificent travelling Yellow Army who provided unswerving support even in the bleakest minutes of the 97. We salute you all.

But, despite all the gore and ugliness, it was a point and a clean sheet. And if offered it before the start, I suspect most of us would have taken it. Johannes Hoff Thorup too, after the horrors of Loftus Road, would, I imagine, have settled for the same.

On the subject of the clean sheet, so few and far between have they become, perhaps we shouldn’t underestimate its importance. It certainly won’t have been lost on Angus and his back four.

Aside from the aforementioned flap, rarely did Portsmouth get in behind our defence, or even slice through it, so at least one part of the game plan worked as per the Colney clear-the-air meeting of Sunday morning.

JHT said that he planned to not talk too much but instead throw the floor open to the players and ask for their thoughts on how and why it went all so wrong at QPR and, in general, away from home.

And judging by the reaction we witnessed last night, the conclusion was that they had previously been fast-tracking to the pretty, tippy-tappy stuff without first of all giving themselves a platform on which to play it.

“Earning the right to play” is the official term I believe – not one of my favourites – but I suppose it sums up the need to get the basics right and match your opponents in the physical sense before theoretically bettering them technically and tactically.

Or, to use JHT’s words: “Put aside the beautiful things and work very very hard!”

He always says it so much more succinctly than me.

And they did. For, *hopefully*, one night only, almost all of the flow and grace was sacrificed for a dogged display of thou-shalt-not-pass.

Those who have played the game will be familiar with this concept.

You take a hammering or dish up a stinker of a performance and in the game immediately following, you target specifically the deficiencies that made it such a stinker in the first place – in City’s case, the lack of bite and fight in duels and all over the pitch.

But in doing so, you over-compensate and the balance tilts almost completely in favour of the gritty side.

That was City last night. So conscious were they of the need to win their duals – or at least not lose them – they almost abandoned the underlying principles of Hoff-ball.

On nights like last night, when the locals have been feasting on raw meat, it is a difficult balance to strike.

Again, the words of JHT explain it far better than I do:

“We have been talking about the risk-reward [balance] and today it was low risk and not too much reward.”

And for that low-risk, nose-to-the-grindstone type display the reward was a point. A pretty useful one in the circumstances, all played against the backdrop of a typically feisty, agitated and hostile Fratton Park.

One of those, we’ll take it and move on type nights.

All of which was made that little bit more difficult by the ludicrous decision to throw another book at Kenny McLean, just three hours before kick-off.

Maybe I’m seeing it all through yellow-tinted spectacles but said “24th-minute incident” is the type that occurs regularly. In almost every game. An inadvertent flailing arm that catches an opponent and looks ten times more sinister in a slowed-down replay.

If we’re now in the realms of re-refereeing games, the “independent Regulatory Commission” is going to be kept very busy. Retrospective red cards are very rare and only ever dished out for blatant and/or serious offences. Was Kenny guilty of either?

No, I don’t think so either.

But four games it is. And now we are deprived of the services of, arguably, the team’s most important player. Ironically, we’ll not see him again until December 29 when our visitors are …… QPR.

Maybe young Kieran Morgan – he of the theatrical dive – will be afforded some traditional Carrow Road yuletide warmth.

So, to Saturday, and Burnley, where a very different challenge awaits.

Let’s just hope that by then JHT has tweaked the risk/reward-ometer.

OTBC.