Torquay United v Portsmouth - JPT Rnd 1

[tufc si]

Not much cop in the JPT or league cup are we eh :-\

[Southampton Gull]

its a brain you need sunshine..................

So says Dim Whittington

[Stocker13]

Unlucky Lee Mansell missing than pen at the end, match wasn't as exciting as I thought though Aaron Downes was SOLID in defense and well deserved man of the match! Also Martin Rice had a good game with some great saves so well done to him! Lets hope we can show Fleetwood the true yellow army!

[bixieupnorth]

roughly 1900 there apparently

cousins lad said pretty good defensively but created nothing at all in the middle, that was without manse too

time for manse and craig then, will mr knill spot the obvious??

always crap in jpt and league cups these days, when was our last decent run??

[OllieGull]

Ironic that Manse was brought on for pens and then misses his, have to say Portsmouth's winning pen was very, very nice.

[PlainmoorRoar]

Pretty poor game in all honesty

Rice - Superb save in the 2nd, good distribution, if he came and collected crosses he would be an excellent 1st choice

Tonge - Good tracking back and won the ball back in man to man situations, poor passing let him down
Peace -
Downes -
Cruise - On that performace i'd rather have Nicho

Cameron - dear me, does he know he is a winger? came deep too often and when he did run at the full back, failed everytime
Harding - 0/10 - One of the worst performances ive ever seen a player put in a TUFC shirt
Lathrope - good touches and passed the ball to a yellow shirt, dying out to be played next to craig
Chappel - didnt influence the game much, bullied off by their fullbacks

Benyon - Lots of running, created nothing
Ball - tried to press their defense but had little support

[AustrianAndyGull]

It's only the JPT but the Harding / Mansell pairing doesn't fill me with confidence. They are both too similar and although i'd have Manse every time over Harding (who has been anonymous in the 2 games I've seen him) I think Mansell himself is looking jaded too. That is a big concern when both our combative midfielders are struggling. Like I said against Northampton we struggled to create because we had to rely on breaks from Chappell or Ball / Hawley holding it up in order to bring others into play. These are our main strikers and we are relying on them to set up chances for our midefielders as they get no service.

Creativity is non existant in the middle and for me we should give Harding / Mansell a bit longer to see if the partnership begins to flourish and if not then drop Lathrope in the hole and set the team up around that system. I would definitely go with Craig before that option was tried but the management don't appear to like the lad so it looks unlikely.

It is glaringly obvious that Harding isn't what we thought he was thus far but it's only fair we give the lad a fair crack of the whip. I guess we'll see in time what Knill decides to do.

Just for the record, I know Harding / Mansell didn't play together tonight - i'm passing comment based on what I've seen thus far and on what others have said about them.

[Gullscorer]

As soon as Mansell came on as a sub right at the end of the game I thought, he's going to take one of the penalties - and he'll miss. And he did..

[Duncan]

Bizarre that you're only allowed 5 players on the bench in the one competition you might give a younger player a chance.

I agree 100%. Absolute madness!

It could even put a few more on the gate?

4 =D =D

[Chris B]

It was so inevitable one of Mansell or Hawley would miss after being brought on at the death purely to take a penalty.

Starting with the positives - we looked quite bright for the last 7mins. We passed to each other, had a good shot by Sullivan saved, Lathrope covered the advancing Tonge superbly, and Ben Harding looked like a footballer. He followed up juggling the ball past two in midfield and passing to a yellow shirt with a rasping shot just wide.

Onto the other 83mins - Rice saved superbly when called upon, which wasn't as often as it could've been. Downes was superb and MOTM, Pearce not far behind, and the full backs were solid. Job well done by the back five.

The negatives: we had no central midfield for most of the match. Any clearance from the Portsmouth defence went straight to their strikers, they could break at will with Harding generally jogging alongside but making no challenge. Our attacks - using the term loosely - were aimless balls forward, normally from the defence. Ball and Benyon fed on scraps, Chapell was isolated, Cameron looked a poor man's Macklin.

Knill needs to sign a central midfielder, get us passing to each other, and put us out of our misery by offloading Craig once and for all if he's not going to give him a run out.

[bengull]

All a bit pedestrian tonight sadly, a lot of huff and puff but very little in the way of end product. Spent a lot of the game trying to contain a vibrant and lively Pompey team and then hit them on the counter-attack, but our counter attacking lacked any cohesion. We missed Hawley big time, the ball just did not stick up top and Benyon and Ball (albeit understandably) had nothing in way of link up or partnership.

Once again perhaps the most telling conclusion was that man of the match was split between our 2 excellent centre backs, this probably tells us where we are at the moment. A team in transition, and building a solid base at the back to start with. Not going to single out any individuals for criticism because I don't believe its the done thing for matches of this irrelevance but there are some I have big doubts about, players who are keeping players like Craig/ Yeoman/ Nial Thompson out of something so trivial as a JPT match day squad - need to be showing more.

That said, my first meaningful watch of Sullivan and I liked what I saw, not overawed by the occasion and a couple of nice touches, definitely one to invest plentiful time and effort into his development. Very bright future.

Took the opportunity to sit in the bench tonight, was nice to see Knill mingling with the crowd, looking very relaxed, he and Brass never stopped communicating with the players all night. They clearly have a set vision of what and how they want to achieve, how long they take to implement it is another matter but I am very happy with who we have in charge.

Last word should go to the Portsmouth fans, noisy from the first minute they didn't shut up for ninety minutes, very impressive.

[tomogull]

Couldn't get to tonight's match but extremely disappointed to see that neither Craig nor Yeoman were in the squad. Obviously we don't know what happens during the week in training but as has already been posted, it seems there is no future for either of them at Plainmoor. I'm sorry that both seem to be out in the cold. Have to say that after being enthusiastic about Knill's appointment, there are just one or two little doubts creeping in .....

[AustrianAndyGull]

There's no doubts from me tomogull, unlike Ling, if it becomes apparent that a player is struggling or things aren't working then Knill will change it. I'm confident of that. A pattern is emerging with our style of play, the problems we are encountering on a regular basis and of certain players not looking the part I admit but give it a bit more time. Knill will juggle things around if we really start to struggle.

[ferrarilover]

Good in patches, bad in patches. When this team plays football, it's often a joy to behold. Sadly, we seem to regress to aimless hacking for periods for no good reason. Pompey a shadow of their former selves. Very good defensively but pretty lacking elsewhere.
Harding, as others have said, needs sacking. Utterly useless. We were different once Chappell went off, but that was only because we stopped trying to find him at every opportunity. Cameron tried, but was up against a couple of very good defenders and couldn't beat them with either pace or skill, but he linked effectively with Tongue.
Rice had very little to do, but made two good saves, one of which was simply out of this world.
Manse's penalty was stupid, both high and wide, which was a shame, since the others were excellent.
Nathan Craig might as well leave now, since both he and Yeoman (and maybe MacKenzie) will be on loan to the Conference shortly.

On the plus side, we'll be hard to beat this year, we won't lose many games. On the down side, until a massive Frenchman comes to our aid, we'll have to put up with watching Ben Useless in yellow.

Matt.

[Dave]

The positives for me from this game was the back 4, very solid all night, Pearce/Downes starting to form a very good partnership, bourne out by the fact that Martin Rice despite Portsmouth having the lion share of the ball, was only forced to make one save all night, and what a save it was, stunning.

Our midfield and attacking play, well, was at best hopeless. We can all go on about creative midfielders, Nathan Craig etc, etc, it just comes down to one thing, and one thing only. Quality.

One prime example of that, Lathrope played a defence spilting pass, which was so badly over hit, it nearly spilt the advertising board behind the goal aswell knocking the wall over. Also simple 5 yrd passes missed, hoofed long balls into no mans land. Just get the simple things right.

One last point, if some of our team played with the same passion as Martin Rice, would do just fine.