Back from the game at Plymouth

[BlueinPLtwenty]

The best I have seen Pompey play for years! We out passed Argyle, 62% possession. Doyle ran the game, Nigel played well. The central defence partnership of Burgess & Clarke hardly gave (that Pompey Fans favourite) Reuben Reid a kick. Davies was hard pressed and Stevens did not have an easy game, but collectively the defence looked firm & resolute. Murphy made one good save, had no chance with the goal and seemed very sound. Roberts terrified them, Tubbs made space and took his penalty well. Evans flitted in and out of the game, Bennett always looked dangerous and had a couple of testing shots. My Argyle season ticket holding friend before the match suggested very strongly that they would win 3-0 admitted after the match that the better side won. I was sat amongst the Argyle "Grey Haired" section of the Grandstand at Home Park so could not show my enthusiasm properly. I am very optimistic on what lies ahead, the performance was positive, productive and awesome!

[RubiconCSL]

Cheers Blue. I was at a wedding today and checking the score from time to time. I said before the game that it would be a good guide on how good we actually are. For me, a very good win. Can't wait for my opening game of the season on Tuesday.

[Earl Grey]

Good report, BlueinPL20, albeit brief.

This is going to be a great, great season!

The only thing that can go wrong imho is that some Premiership club eyes Cookie up to replace their manager.

Sorry to be slightly negative but should we spectacularly demolish League Two then people will look up and Cookie is a football manager who is ambitious. Yes, he dropped down a division to come to Pompey but the potential here is so much greater than at Chesterfield.

However, if a big club sees him as the answer to their problems then he may be tempted. The only upside might be that he's unlikely to rob us of all our players if it's a Prem outfit he goes to....maybe he'll take the odd one or two but not enough to hurt us badly.

Ahhhhh, shut up you old fool, EG.

Right. Back into Rose-Tinted mode.

We are going up!

[youtube][/youtube]

[miltoninLA]

Thanks BlueinPLtwenty, really appreciated. All that sitting on your hands is way too frustrating for me so double thanks.

[Pompey Gary]

The only thing that can go wrong imho is that some Premiership club eyes Cookie up to replace their manager.

I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there, EG. A Premier League club swooping in for Cook? He's not managed above League 1 and British managers are hardly de rigueur in the top flight. Bit of a gamble.

That said, a really good season down here and I could see a big Championship club perhaps taking an interest. And that would be a test of PC's loyalty!

[RubiconCSL]

If we romp this league (big if I know) and do go up to L1 and PC gets financial support for the next season, then I can't see what Championship club would be big enough to lure him away. If he has faith in his own ability, then he'd only need to wait one more season to be there anyway. If we don't get promoted, then who would want to poach him? So, as I see it, it mainly comes down to the financial support he would get in L1, if we get there this season.

The only thing that can go wrong imho is that some Premiership club eyes Cookie up to replace their manager.

I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there, EG. A Premier League club swooping in for Cook? He's not managed above League 1 and British managers are hardly de rigueur in the top flight. Bit of a gamble.

That said, a really good season down here and I could see a big Championship club perhaps taking an interest. And that would be a test of PC's loyalty!

[Pompey Gary]

There are bigger clubs than Pompey currently in the Championship that could offer a manager a much better platform to get into the Premier League. If he's really that good he won't stay at Pompey, and that's just a fact of the football food chain.

[No Shot Sherlock]

How many games in a season? We've made a good start. No more, no less.

[Lost in Transportation]

How many games in a season? We've made a good start. No more, no less.

Last time we started a season with three wins, the manager was sacked on New Years Day and the club drifted to 20th in the table (amassing a further 42 points in the remaining 43 games).

[Lost in Transportation]

And here is a BFTG Plymouth stylee...

Well, my match review for this game still wasn't exactly immediate due to another busy weekend but at least it comes within 36 hours of full-time for this one which I'd like to hope Pasoti considers to be a respectable length of time

Well, that was a a bit disappointing wasn't it? From an excellent win at Wimbledon to a game in which we were the better side for the majority of the game (though personally, I still felt we bottled it) on Tuesday night at home to Gillingham to a match in which we were by some considerable distance second best from minute 1 to 90. It was gut-wrenching to see us be played off the park by a team that when all's said and done are in the same league as us. It was all the more disappointing given the feel good factor that we had going into the match. It was to be Derek Adams first home game in the league and the fact that Portsmouth are always amongst the most eagerly anticipated opponents was just a happy coincidence. The rousing moment at kick-off where Three Little Birds was played over the tannoy and all 11 players clapped the Devonport End en masse set it all up for a momentous first home game...then that happened.

To be frank, we weren't just beaten. We were soundly beaten. The 2-1 scoreline doesn't fully reflect the domination that Portsmouth had over the game. The balance of play was completely theirs and (even though we did have particular spells where we looked like we may get back into the game) there was never really a moment where they didn't look the better of the two sides. In spite of all this however, my thesis on all of this is a controversial one. We still don't need to improve that much in spite of this loss. All we need to change...is the opposition. Under Derek Adams, we've been trying with various degrees of success to play a high-octane passing game in which there's lots of good movement all around the pitch and we generally play the ball on the ground but in a way that is fast and not at all slow or contemplative. Portsmouth were so fantastic at both playing their own game and countering us that they literally did not allow us to play our game.

As a football fan, you have a tendency to see any game through the lenses of your own side. If we came back from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 with 10 minutes to go, we would be praising it as the most amazing show of Argyle resilience and spirit that we had seen in years. If we chucked away the 3 goal lead in the same circumstances, we would be bemoaning our utter lack of bottle and defensive nous. Therefore on both occasions we would see it through the lens of how good or bad we were as opposed to how good or bad the opposition were. However, as obvious as this sounds, there are two teams competing in every football match. Sometimes you just have to say we were well beaten by the opposition. That may not be palatable but I think it's the truth.

We were up against a team who were so mesmerisingly good in every way that I almost began to find myself quietly admiring it. Their high pressing in their final third of the pitch was so energetic in terms of stamina exertion and so organised in terms of shape that it was far beyond ANY pressing I had ever seen at League Two level. Their on the ball play was just ridiculous. One of the things I prefer about Argyle under Adams to Argyle under Sheridan is that when we're on the ball, we attempt to play more as a team with coordinated moves then as a bunch of (albeit talented) individuals who looked as though they'd only just met that morning. Pompey however take the principle of playing as a team to a whole new level. The telepathy between all their attacking players, knowing exactly where to be at any one time for maximum stretching of our defence, was simply stunning. It was so well choreographed as to be almost more of an an art than a sport. They would constantly probe and test one area of our defence, knowing that we we would commit more men to that area, before quickly switching the play to where we weren't expecting it and were more stretched. I'm amazed to see so many people saying that it was Argyle who were bad more so than Pompey who were good. I noticed them perform that particular trick from the stands so many times and it truly was a cut above any other League Two side who've ever tried to do similar. Put simply, I was in awe of how well Portsmouth played. By a considerable distance, they were the best side to come here since we were relegated into League Two in 2011.

I think that will be worn out by the end of the season where they'll win the league with about 100 points. But even if I'm wrong there, there were certainly having a hot day against us. And, as unsettling a thought as this may be, when they're on a hot day like they were I think we will always be relying on an element of luck to get anything out of the game. They've got the best squad in the league and possibly the best manager. As good as we could be under Adams, I don't think we're at the stage yet where we can realistically hope to get much from those games without relying on luck. The good news though is that those games won't come very often. Most sides we face this season won't be a tenth as good as Pompey were. My suspicion at the moment is that we are more than good enough to see off the average sides in this league but a lot more work needs to be done before we're a match for a team as good as Pompey on their good day. But, that's only natural I guess given the respective budgets and squad strength of the two sides.

In the first half, I do think we tried to counter Portsmouth very well. We realised very early on in the game that the visitors' precise passing and gegenpressing (their emphasis on pressing immediately after they lost the ball) was going to stop us playing the free-flowing football that we were used to. We realised then, that the only way that we were every going to have a chance of winning was through stout defending and smart counter-attacking. In the first half, I genuinely think we managed this more or less as well as we could have against such a great side. Yes, we panicked slightly for the first ten minutes but when we got into the groove of this new gameplan we were fine. Nelson and Hartley were exceptional defensively as they almost always are. Even the inconsistent Mellor did alright against the exceedingly tough task of Gary Roberts and Enda Stevens going down his side. He was up against two of their best players and held them off pretty well bearing in mind he was getting little support from Boateng and Tanner both of whom had dire games defensively. Sawyer on the other side was once again reliable and didn't do much wrong. Whenever possible, we created our best attacking chances from breaking up the pitch and trying to make good use of the ball in the diagonal space between the corner flag. Pompey were too tight defensively for us to play anywhere else really so this was our best bet. Carey, Wylde and Tanner all had a half of looking fairly promising going forward albeit not quite having the perfect end product. The same went for Reuben Reid although the aforementioned caveat applies that it was against a ludicrously good side.

On the whole though, some of our play in the first half was pretty decent. The roaming of movement between the three attacking midfielders was decent and it was what created enough space for Argyle to have our only serious effort of the half: a fine shot from Carey that was just tipped over the bar by their keeper. It all looked like petering out into a solid enough first half in which we looked like getting into it a little bit more as half-time approached when Pompey went 1-0 up courtesy of a very dubious penalty. When I first saw it from the Devonport End, I didn't have any complaints about it. Seeing it again on the highlights, I now think it is a very well-executed dive. It's not even like the Alessandra penalties where Lewi always used to be behind the player and would put his leg where he thinks contact will be. It was a smarter dive even than that. Stevens can feel the pressure of Boateng closing in on him so he just stops still before any contact has been made. This therefore provokes contact and hey presto, the penalty is given. I didn't at all rate Boateng's performance on Saturday but he wasn't to blame for Stevens's successful tricking of the ref.

I've spent most of this post so far saying how actually, Argyle did as well as they could do against an unstoppable Pompey side. This does not apply to the second half where I thought we were pretty poor and again showed signs of mental weakness. The sort of mental weakness that I ranted about after Tuesday's loss to Gillingham. We seemed to have the mentality (and there are still clearly enough players still playing from the Sheridan era for this to be an issue) that we were behind and therefore out of it. The element of hopelessness began to sink into our players. All of our neat smart play and interchanging in the diagonal areas became a thing of the past very rapidly. We didn't look nearly composed enough when we were trying to clear the ball out of our defence and when we did get it up there, our attackers looked too shocked to get it and we lost it again very quickly because we simply didn't know what to do with it which was very frustrating.

Pompey's second goal was a long time coming and come it did from another penalty, this one indisputable as Adams rightly says in his post-match interview. I can take losing like we did in the first half, by just failing to execute the right plan against a top class team. I can't take the second half capitulation where the frightened rabbit mentality began to sink in. I will also give my first words of criticism to Adams for not making enough use of the subs bench. OK, we may not exactly have a lot of glittering options on the bench. But Pompey in the lead-in to their second were so completely and utterly dominant that the time came when we had to change SOMETHING even if none of the options looked particularly impressive. It had got to the point where twist could not possibly be worse than stick. The one change he did make was a switch to 4-4-2 with Brunt on for Nelse. Well, this did stem the flow briefly but only briefly. Brunt's energy and the change in shape re-vitalised us as an immediate impact but within 5 minutes we were back to being pegged into our own half permanently.

Annoyingly, as so often happened under Sheridan, we only started really playing football again when we were out of the game. We played fine after going 2-0 down and almost annoyingly, we then got one back thanks to a well worked team goal which culminated in an excellent strike from Wydle who had cut in centrally to take the shot. There was then a brief bombardment in stoppage time but we left it too little, too late.

So my final summary of the game....it wasn't perfect by any stretch. The second half annoyed me greatly. But on the whole I think we have to accept we were just well beaten. I don't want this to sound like grateful for our lot, green tinted, fingers in ears talk but when they were as good as they were on the day I don't think we can expect to be a match for them. At least, not with our respective budgets and us being so early on in the Adams rebuild process. What I will say though is as follows: we did have a lot of bad luck. I don't mean 'Carl Fletcher' bad luck in which basically every single loss was attributed to luck. In spite of their greater quality, Pompey did have more flukey ricochets drop their way than is usual for a match. They did also HAVE all of the refereeing decisions drop their way. Stupid little free kicks all over the pitch, as well as the handball penalty shout in the second half that didn't get given. We also btw should 100% have had a penalty at 1-0 down for a clear foul on Nelse in the area which led to him getting injured and subbed off. The referee bizarrely gave it the other way. So when you consider the quality of the opposition, the earliness of the season, the bad refereeing and otherwise luck...I don't think we need to make wholesale changes. I just think we need to carry on much as we are and if we do so, there won't be much of a need to change in the vast majority of League Two matches. If we lose against Carlisle and Northampton, laugh at me. For now, I'm convinced I'm right. Yes still some little things to solve. But I can't help feeling that we're still well and truly on the right path with Derek Adams as our manager. There is more but...

[Earl Grey]

And here is a BFTG Plymouth stylee...

Well, my match review for this game still wasn't exactly immediate due to another busy weekend but at least it comes within 36 hours of full-time for this one which I'd like to hope Pasoti considers to be a respectable length of time

Well, that was a a bit disappointing wasn't it? From an excellent win at Wimbledon to a game in which we were the better side for the majority of the game (though personally, I still felt we bottled it) on Tuesday night at home to Gillingham to a match in which we were by some considerable distance second best from minute 1 to 90. It was gut-wrenching to see us be played off the park by a team that when all's said and done are in the same league as us. It was all the more disappointing given the feel good factor that we had going into the match. It was to be Derek Adams first home game in the league and the fact that Portsmouth are always amongst the most eagerly anticipated opponents was just a happy coincidence. The rousing moment at kick-off where Three Little Birds was played over the tannoy and all 11 players clapped the Devonport End en masse set it all up for a momentous first home game...then that happened.

To be frank, we weren't just beaten. We were soundly beaten. The 2-1 scoreline doesn't fully reflect the domination that Portsmouth had over the game. The balance of play was completely theirs and (even though we did have particular spells where we looked like we may get back into the game) there was never really a moment where they didn't look the better of the two sides. In spite of all this however, my thesis on all of this is a controversial one. We still don't need to improve that much in spite of this loss. All we need to change...is the opposition. Under Derek Adams, we've been trying with various degrees of success to play a high-octane passing game in which there's lots of good movement all around the pitch and we generally play the ball on the ground but in a way that is fast and not at all slow or contemplative. Portsmouth were so fantastic at both playing their own game and countering us that they literally did not allow us to play our game.

As a football fan, you have a tendency to see any game through the lenses of your own side. If we came back from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 with 10 minutes to go, we would be praising it as the most amazing show of Argyle resilience and spirit that we had seen in years. If we chucked away the 3 goal lead in the same circumstances, we would be bemoaning our utter lack of bottle and defensive nous. Therefore on both occasions we would see it through the lens of how good or bad we were as opposed to how good or bad the opposition were. However, as obvious as this sounds, there are two teams competing in every football match. Sometimes you just have to say we were well beaten by the opposition. That may not be palatable but I think it's the truth.

We were up against a team who were so mesmerisingly good in every way that I almost began to find myself quietly admiring it. Their high pressing in their final third of the pitch was so energetic in terms of stamina exertion and so organised in terms of shape that it was far beyond ANY pressing I had ever seen at League Two level. Their on the ball play was just ridiculous. One of the things I prefer about Argyle under Adams to Argyle under Sheridan is that when we're on the ball, we attempt to play more as a team with coordinated moves then as a bunch of (albeit talented) individuals who looked as though they'd only just met that morning. Pompey however take the principle of playing as a team to a whole new level. The telepathy between all their attacking players, knowing exactly where to be at any one time for maximum stretching of our defence, was simply stunning. It was so well choreographed as to be almost more of an an art than a sport. They would constantly probe and test one area of our defence, knowing that we we would commit more men to that area, before quickly switching the play to where we weren't expecting it and were more stretched. I'm amazed to see so many people saying that it was Argyle who were bad more so than Pompey who were good. I noticed them perform that particular trick from the stands so many times and it truly was a cut above any other League Two side who've ever tried to do similar. Put simply, I was in awe of how well Portsmouth played. By a considerable distance, they were the best side to come here since we were relegated into League Two in 2011.

I think that will be worn out by the end of the season where they'll win the league with about 100 points. But even if I'm wrong there, there were certainly having a hot day against us. And, as unsettling a thought as this may be, when they're on a hot day like they were I think we will always be relying on an element of luck to get anything out of the game. They've got the best squad in the league and possibly the best manager. As good as we could be under Adams, I don't think we're at the stage yet where we can realistically hope to get much from those games without relying on luck. The good news though is that those games won't come very often. Most sides we face this season won't be a tenth as good as Pompey were. My suspicion at the moment is that we are more than good enough to see off the average sides in this league but a lot more work needs to be done before we're a match for a team as good as Pompey on their good day. But, that's only natural I guess given the respective budgets and squad strength of the two sides.

In the first half, I do think we tried to counter Portsmouth very well. We realised very early on in the game that the visitors' precise passing and gegenpressing (their emphasis on pressing immediately after they lost the ball) was going to stop us playing the free-flowing football that we were used to. We realised then, that the only way that we were every going to have a chance of winning was through stout defending and smart counter-attacking. In the first half, I genuinely think we managed this more or less as well as we could have against such a great side. Yes, we panicked slightly for the first ten minutes but when we got into the groove of this new gameplan we were fine. Nelson and Hartley were exceptional defensively as they almost always are. Even the inconsistent Mellor did alright against the exceedingly tough task of Gary Roberts and Enda Stevens going down his side. He was up against two of their best players and held them off pretty well bearing in mind he was getting little support from Boateng and Tanner both of whom had dire games defensively. Sawyer on the other side was once again reliable and didn't do much wrong. Whenever possible, we created our best attacking chances from breaking up the pitch and trying to make good use of the ball in the diagonal space between the corner flag. Pompey were too tight defensively for us to play anywhere else really so this was our best bet. Carey, Wylde and Tanner all had a half of looking fairly promising going forward albeit not quite having the perfect end product. The same went for Reuben Reid although the aforementioned caveat applies that it was against a ludicrously good side.

On the whole though, some of our play in the first half was pretty decent. The roaming of movement between the three attacking midfielders was decent and it was what created enough space for Argyle to have our only serious effort of the half: a fine shot from Carey that was just tipped over the bar by their keeper. It all looked like petering out into a solid enough first half in which we looked like getting into it a little bit more as half-time approached when Pompey went 1-0 up courtesy of a very dubious penalty. When I first saw it from the Devonport End, I didn't have any complaints about it. Seeing it again on the highlights, I now think it is a very well-executed dive. It's not even like the Alessandra penalties where Lewi always used to be behind the player and would put his leg where he thinks contact will be. It was a smarter dive even than that. Stevens can feel the pressure of Boateng closing in on him so he just stops still before any contact has been made. This therefore provokes contact and hey presto, the penalty is given. I didn't at all rate Boateng's performance on Saturday but he wasn't to blame for Stevens's successful tricking of the ref.

I've spent most of this post so far saying how actually, Argyle did as well as they could do against an unstoppable Pompey side. This does not apply to the second half where I thought we were pretty poor and again showed signs of mental weakness. The sort of mental weakness that I ranted about after Tuesday's loss to Gillingham. We seemed to have the mentality (and there are still clearly enough players still playing from the Sheridan era for this to be an issue) that we were behind and therefore out of it. The element of hopelessness began to sink into our players. All of our neat smart play and interchanging in the diagonal areas became a thing of the past very rapidly. We didn't look nearly composed enough when we were trying to clear the ball out of our defence and when we did get it up there, our attackers looked too shocked to get it and we lost it again very quickly because we simply didn't know what to do with it which was very frustrating.

Pompey's second goal was a long time coming and come it did from another penalty, this one indisputable as Adams rightly says in his post-match interview. I can take losing like we did in the first half, by just failing to execute the right plan against a top class team. I can't take the second half capitulation where the frightened rabbit mentality began to sink in. I will also give my first words of criticism to Adams for not making enough use of the subs bench. OK, we may not exactly have a lot of glittering options on the bench. But Pompey in the lead-in to their second were so completely and utterly dominant that the time came when we had to change SOMETHING even if none of the options looked particularly impressive. It had got to the point where twist could not possibly be worse than stick. The one change he did make was a switch to 4-4-2 with Brunt on for Nelse. Well, this did stem the flow briefly but only briefly. Brunt's energy and the change in shape re-vitalised us as an immediate impact but within 5 minutes we were back to being pegged into our own half permanently.

Annoyingly, as so often happened under Sheridan, we only started really playing football again when we were out of the game. We played fine after going 2-0 down and almost annoyingly, we then got one back thanks to a well worked team goal which culminated in an excellent strike from Wydle who had cut in centrally to take the shot. There was then a brief bombardment in stoppage time but we left it too little, too late.

So my final summary of the game....it wasn't perfect by any stretch. The second half annoyed me greatly. But on the whole I think we have to accept we were just well beaten. I don't want this to sound like grateful for our lot, green tinted, fingers in ears talk but when they were as good as they were on the day I don't think we can expect to be a match for them. At least, not with our respective budgets and us being so early on in the Adams rebuild process. What I will say though is as follows: we did have a lot of bad luck. I don't mean 'Carl Fletcher' bad luck in which basically every single loss was attributed to luck. In spite of their greater quality, Pompey did have more flukey ricochets drop their way than is usual for a match. They did also HAVE all of the refereeing decisions drop their way. Stupid little free kicks all over the pitch, as well as the handball penalty shout in the second half that didn't get given. We also btw should 100% have had a penalty at 1-0 down for a clear foul on Nelse in the area which led to him getting injured and subbed off. The referee bizarrely gave it the other way. So when you consider the quality of the opposition, the earliness of the season, the bad refereeing and otherwise luck...I don't think we need to make wholesale changes. I just think we need to carry on much as we are and if we do so, there won't be much of a need to change in the vast majority of League Two matches. If we lose against Carlisle and Northampton, laugh at me. For now, I'm convinced I'm right. Yes still some little things to solve. But I can't help feeling that we're still well and truly on the right path with Derek Adams as our manager. There is more but...

Great stuff. LiKW. I think we should have a 'BFTG Opponent Style' thread every game.

And the good thing is, whoever posts it doesn't even have to write it !

[Pompey Penguin]

Thanks LiT/LiKW. Great post from someone who clearly thinks about the game and tries to be honest about their team. Makes me wish Plymouth well for the season. It is always interesting to hear the opposition viewpoint, and in this case I hope that they are right about Pompey!

[Bluesbro']

"We still don't need to improve that much in spite of this loss. All we need to change...is the opposition."
Made me laugh.

[pomp 'n circumstance]

"We still don't need to improve that much in spite of this loss. All we need to change...is the opposition."
Made me laugh.

This is a clever bit of prose from LiT, even down to the green type - a good break down of the game as one would expect from the erstwhile Kate Winslet! And yet.......it still feels like it's been written by a Pompey fan. Show me a Plymouth fan that can be that magnanimous about the opposition and I'll show you a fraud. As a fan, you find yourself watching your own team and the opposition are almost there to make up the numbers and the ref is their Number 12 - there's nothing even handed about the fan. They live, breath and implore their team to win, but any logic flies out the window.

It's all the better to have this kind of reasoned assessment from LiT and very clever it was and long may it continue - it's just that I don't swallow the surreal reasoning of the 'fan' from Plymouth Hoe!

[pompeygunner]

"We still don't need to improve that much in spite of this loss. All we need to change...is the opposition."
Made me laugh.

This is a clever bit of prose from LiT, even down to the green type - a good break down of the game as one would expect from the erstwhile Kate Winslet! And yet.......it still feels like it's been written by a Pompey fan. Show me a Plymouth fan that can be that magnanimous about the opposition and I'll show you a fraud. As a fan, you find yourself watching your own team and the opposition are almost there to make up the numbers and the ref is their Number 12 - there's nothing even handed about the fan. They live, breath and implore their team to win, but any logic flies out the window.

It's all the better to have this kind of reasoned assessment from LiT and very clever it was and long may it continue - it's just that I don't swallow the surreal reasoning of the 'fan' from Plymouth Hoe!

Except its not LiT. The person in question does after every game on http://www.pasoti.co.uk.