FAN’S VIEW 22/23 – No.17: PORTSMOUTH AWAY

Staying positive?

If it wasn’t for our new minted owners and the vision of a bright future at Stratfield Brake that we’ve been sold, the gloom surrounding our club at present would be pretty horrendous. As it is it still feels quite bleak based on what has taken place on the field of play thus far in the 2022/23 season.

The crowd on Saturday might have appeared quite impressive in the circumstances – 8210, of which only 687 were away fans, but looking around anyone could tell there was not that number in the ground. Season ticket holders are staying away and the lack of belief in the on field project is further highlighted when quite a few fans that used to travel to almost every away game are now picking and choosing or giving up altogether even if, for some exiles, the game is close to their door-step. That’s certainly how it feels with a general malaise having understandably set in.

That said our travelling support has still been quite decent but if we were the real deal when it comes to being considered proper contenders, it would be so many more.

Very hard to get excited about any of it.

I’ve got a mate whose optimism is way higher than mine which I think is reined in by reality. He’s called a 2-0 Oxford win at Fratton Park and the need to stay positive. Well I’m positive in a different way, that’s why I’m not going. A big thick line tells me to stay at home which is a pisser. So Covid it is. Got away with it until now.

Didn’t seem right doing this

Got to say how great the lad in the ticket office was when I rang to say that although I had purchased a coach and match ticket I now wouldn’t be able to attend. He said he could refund the coach ticket and after contacting Pompey said that as I couldn’t get the ticket back to the club, if I sent a picture of it after I’d ripped it up I could have a refund on that too. Well done Portsmouth too. Now just waiting for the money to pop back into my account.

IFollow it is then for a tenner. Return to lockdown days. Bloody coronavirus but the next best thing to being there.

Our opponents

Big club Pompey, no question. Yet after dropping out of the Championship in 2011/12 they’ve not been back since and spent four seasons in L2. Quite unthinkable when they were in the Premier League for seven years until they finished bottom in 2009/10. They were though one of those financial basket cases with some dodgy owners so perhaps not surprising after all. On Monday’s Price of Football podcast Kieran Maguire mentioned that they left some of their best players out of the 2010 Cup Final because they couldn’t afford the bonuses that had been written into their contracts which would have been triggered.

They were on the verge of liquidation when placed into administration in 2013 but were saved after being bought out by the fan-owned Pompey Supporters Trust (PST). They ended up with 48.5% of the club’s shares with the rest being held by 16 shareholders called “presidents”.

In 2017 the PST and 75% of the presidents voted to sell their shares to Tornante investment group owned by the family of former Walt Disney chief executive Michael Eisner. So all a bit saner now and no longer Micky Mouse.

The offer was £5.67m for 100% of the club plus an extra £10m investment. Seems quite cheap to me given the sleeping giant nature of the club and that they were then not in debt with four or five million on the balance sheet but probably a case yet again of supporters groups only being able to take a club so far

Their latest accounts to year end 30 June 2021 show:

• Turnover £7.38m of which £5.48m was from the EFL and broadcasting. Ticket sales, £145k, were almost non-existent due to Covid. The club did not charge fans for season tickets in the year, unlike most clubs in the EFL. In 2019 ticket sales had been £6.1m.
• Cost of sales £7.02m
• Wage bill £7.86m giving a wage to turnover ratio of 106%.
• Admin expenses £3.1m
• Depreciation and amortisation £1.78m
• Loss on the year £3.86m
• Balance sheet £11.08m

Portsmouth 1 Oxford United 1

It was very strange watching on a TV screen with me not being one of the 784 yellow travellers in attendance and whilst the iFollow product is much improved from the early days, which out of necessity was very basic, it still took some getting used to when compared to Sky coverage of live football. Fewer cameras, fewer angles and when the ball was on the far side of the pitch it appeared to be a different colour to the white it became when closer to the side where the camera(s) were.

The vast majority of Oxford fans would surely have taken a point from this at kick-off. We achieved this with pride and with much on show that has been unfortunately lacking in many games this season. We had strength, will and desire and were set up as a solid organised unit.

Where has all this been hiding for most of the season and will this be what we are now going to get as the norm?

We had the opportunity to take three points here but that we didn’t I put down to Billy Bodin not referee Sam Purkiss for allowing Colby Bishop’s 78^th minute equaliser. Having played the incident back in slow motion it looks to me like the ball’s contact is with the top of the scorer’s sleeve which I believe actually isn’t an infringement. Infuriating all round of course given the resistance we’d put up and the deflection that got the ball to Bishop in the first place. That we didn’t crumble thereafter in the remaining 12 minutes plus eight added on was magnificent and in a way made it feel like a win, which of course it bloody wasn’t.

Fine margins can win football matches. Teams should be looking how to exploit them all the time. Instead here Billy Bodin, who to be fair had played well, handed a big advantage to the home side through ill-discipline. If I was his manager I would be furious. There’s no way when already on a yellow card should he be making a challenge from behind like he did. It’s brainless football. That’s the second time he’s walked this season. Matty Taylor showed ill-discipline too on Saturday making it three dismissals for us so far this season. I don’t think any team has had more. It was madness to think that would be over-turned on appeal. It needs cutting out forthwith and that is down to Karl Robinson as manager to fix but the way he behaves himself I can’t see it. Given our injuries we can ill afford many suspensions.

It’s not often we control a first half in an away game in the fashion that we did here. We moved the ball about in simple fashion without trying anything flash and closed our hosts down quickly preventing them from getting going at all. It was clear that everyone was going to put a shift in whilst their legs would allow it.

Our goal, if it had been scored at a higher level, may well have had pundits salivating in their analysis. The move started in our own half. It showed the value of patience. Keep the ball. Find the man. Look for the opening. Marcus McGuane found Ciaron Brown who beat his man and laid it back to Stuart Findlay who in turn passed square to Elliott Moore. He had plenty of space to find Sam Long and from the half way line our right back looked up and aimed for our pair of strikers.  Gatlin O’Donkor’s chested cushion pass was perfect for Kyle Joseph who hit a gem of a first time shot past the stretching Josh Griffiths. Probably the best Oxford goal this season.

Provider of the assist. Great effort from the young lad. Photo, Simon Jaggs

We were really good value for the lead at the break. Pompey had hardly threatened our goal. Anything in the air had been won by Moore. It had been us who looked more like adding to our tally than them getting off the mark. Whilst our shooting was much improved on the efforts against Posh, it wasn’t quite accurate enough to double our lead though. It was Joseph who came closest, possibly shaving the post. He was having one of those games when I’m thinking, yes he’s some player I’d like to get him permanently, not one when he looks average. Given his age, his work ethic and the goals he’s starting to score in what, let’s be honest, has been a struggling team, I feel very guilty for sometimes being critical.  If I were the owners and had the chance to sign him I’d go for it in a flash but it’s the usual conundrum, the better he plays the more likely the Swans are to want him back or bigger clubs than us try and get him on loan. I hope there’s not a recall clause in the January window.

We went close again through Cameron Brannagan early on in the second half after playing some neat football but now Portsmouth were definitely more threatening and we were no longer controlling matters in the way we had.

Our defending got a little more desperate but bodies were thrown on the line whenever necessary. Following Bodin’s departure it got even more backs to the wall stuff. A second goal would surely have sealed it for us but the chance of getting that, which had been there when it was 11 v 11, completely disappeared. I still forced myself to picture Djavan Anderson breaking away and rounding the keeper. Instead the only thing I can remember him doing is giving the ball away when under no pressure, thus increasing the risk we’d not see the game out for that precious point. Thankfully that risk did not materialise.

Hopefully the substitutions of Marcus Browne and Brannagan were just precautionary. We can ill afford to lose two of our best players for any length of time on top of being without “Sam Baldock, Josh Murphy and Yanic Wildschut who returned to the training pitches yesterday but is still five or six weeks away from a return to action”.  Quote taken from the preview on the official site. Tellingly no timescales for Baldock and Murphy given.