The waiting is over and the big day is finally here. This is the day the fans of Saints and Pompey have been waiting for, probably ever since Pompey confirmed their survival in the Championship in April of last season. Saints had of course been nailed on for relegation ever since Russell Martin and Darren Mowbray embarked on their recruitment for last season.

Recruitment has been at the forefront of everybody’s thoughts leading up to the end of the transfer window on September 1 with both clubs being active until the last moment. Pompey signed a striker from Crystal Palace and one of their former players, Conor Chaplin who has been with Ipswich for the past few seasons. We have played Ipswich five times relatively recently and Chaplin has not done anything, despite the Pompey angle being pushed in the media and by the player himself in the build up to those games. Hopefully he continues that trend of being invisible, this afternoon or alternatively, he gets so fired up that he gets himself sent off.

John Mousinho is the current Portsmouth manager of course and anyone who listens to Radio Solent on match days can’t help but catch some of his interviews and he seems like a decent guy and a decent manager. I genuinely thought that he might get head hunted by a bigger Championship club this summer, mainly because Pompey have a pretty low budget in the context of the Championship and I wonder when he’ll reach the point when he thinks he can’t take them any further. Since being promoted to the Championship, Mousinho has been pragmatic in the way he set his team up and it kept them up last year and has seen them make a decent start this year, albeit with their wins coming against teams who are expected to struggle in Oxford and Preston however, as we said before we played Stoke, you can only beat what’s in front of you and Pompey go into this game feeling good about themselves and really having nothing to lose today in terms of their season as a whole.

I would argue that Will Still needs to win this game more than his counterpart and all eyes will be on the sheet an hour before kickoff regarding how many of Saints new signings make their debut in this huge game. Finn Azaz will certainly be making his home debut and I would anticipate Tom Fellows being in the starting lineup as well. I’m also interested in how the nearly reconfigured St Mary’s with the new away end deals with having a hostile set of supporters present. I would imagine that with the gates around that corner, so there will be no contact between the fans on the bubble buses and the Saints fans. There will doubtless be some idiots who cause issues however and I am sure there will be some Pompey cases in town who are not going to the game.

Will Still has so far this season, been playing variations on formations that have three central defenders, with the justification being that he didn’t have players to play any other way, namely his originally favoured 4-2-3-1 formation, which we used throughout a majority of preseason. The arrivals of new fullbacks in Roeslev and Jelert and new wingers in Fellows and Scienza and a genuine number 10 in Azaz have made this very possible. I am hoping to see this today and our attacking play click into gear. I don’t think all of the new signings will play. For example, I think the starting wingers will be Fellows and Fraser but I do think it will be back four with Jack and THB as the central defensive picks. Gavin Bazunu is going to have an interesting afternoon because of course, he was on loan at Pompey before joining us three seasons ago and I’m sure there will be very little goodwill towards him from the away end this afternoon. I expect that Baz will be quite pleased that they are not behind his goal anymore.

Overall, I can’t wait for this game because it is different from your run of the mill game against anyone else because of the emotions that you go through as the game approaches and of course the high stakes nature of it. The cities are so close to each other that everyone either has some mates or works with someone with allegiances to the other side.  Personally, I’ve got loads of connections given that I lived in Waterlooville for 16 years. There were times last season when I was kind of hoping that Pompey would get relegated for a couple of reasons. One was because it would just be funny to see them sink back to the depths and another would be that I didn’t want to have to go through the hassle of playing them and all the bollocks that comes with it. This “bollocks“ includes the hassle of the match day with thepotential for trouble and also the endless stream of complete and utter bollocks from their end of the motorway, on social media. Having lived in both cities, I think that the main difference between Southampton people and Portsmouth people, especially with regard to how they support their clubs, is one of humility.  You will never find a Saints fan claiming that we are the best of anything whereas you will find Pompey fans who will tell you until they are literally blue in the face that they have the bestest fans and the bestest ground and all the bestest historic club and all that shit. Do they genuinely believe it?

The fact of the matter is however that it’s just the loud ones that like this. Personally, I’m good friends with many of Pompey fan and as a rule, they recognise when their team is shit, the same way that we do and have the same pride in their team and desire for it to do well. The more I’ve been thinking about it from the outside, the more I realise that there are actually quite a few similarities in that both clubs are provincial clubs and are the only club in the respective city. Both are going to have their days in the sun and neither are ever going to be a powerhouse in English football. Both sides fans and Pompey fans support their club because it was the club they were born into, not because of any glory hunting reasons. Anyway, now the game is here and I can’t wait.

That’s enough of the sensible shit. Let’s fucking smash these bastards on the pitch today.

So, an early start and travelling to the game I have to drive over a bridge that goes over the M27 and there is a police car parked on the bridge with a copper looking at her phone when she should possibly be looking at the motorway. It’s two hours before the kickoff. Anyway, into town and park up and walk across the Northam Bridge and it’s just Saints shirts and no issues anywhere. It all seems pretty quiet until I turned the corner by the Engineers Arms into Britannia Road and get to the Northam fan zone. We’re a good 90 minutes before kick-off, pints are being sunk and everyone is in decent spirits. Despite not really give a shit about things like fan zones and the like, I have to say that they have definitely improved the match day experience for those who want to get involved in that kind of thing. The Dell Bar is packed and we have the obligatory smoke canister outside the statue of Ted Bates and the obligatory warning being played on a speaker about taking smoke canisters into the ground being illegal.

Team news and it’s exactly the team that I would’ve picked, given that it’s 4-2-3-1 with Stephens and THB as the central defenders, a home debut for Finn Azaz and a full Saints debut for Tom Fellows on the wing. Ryan Fraser is preferred to Jay Robinson and the bench contains Caspar Jander and Leo Scienza. The atmosphere building as we reach the last few minutes before the players come out and even my little area of the Itchin/Chapel corner is getting involved with the singing. Say what you like about having the stain of blue in the stadium but it certainly wakes up even the usual sleepy areas of the home support. Let’s get this game fucking going.

Away we go in the ball goes out for a throw in the Pompy right back area and no one goes to get the ball. The Pompey right back Swanson is wandering around like he doesn’t know what to fucking do. Will Still leaves the technical area goes against the ball and gives it to him which he lets bounce off his chest and of course, this prompts the referees to get involved and come over and have a word and the bottom line is that a full minute is wasted before Swanson eventually throws the ball back into play. Then another stoppage, then another one. Fucking hell, I’ve never seen a team time waste from the very first whistle but here we are and referee Donahue needs to get a grip.

It’s a poor start of the game and nothing much happens until Pompy break down the right and the ball gets fed into Chaplin in midfield and he tries to shoot from about 30 yards but scuffs it on the ground and it goes pretty close to the outstretched boot of Bishop sliding in, but carries on wide for a goal kick.

Ten minutes gone and across comes in from Murphy on the left, which is poorly cleared out to the edge of the box by THB and Dozzell shows great technique to side foot a first time effort and it flies over Baz and pings off the bar and out. Fuck me that was close and out of nowhere.

Pompey’s tactic of getting the ball to Murphy at every opportunity is working as he works a yard against Roeslev and his low cross is met 5 yards out by the sliding Bishop, who can only scoop it up and onto the roof of the net. I wonder if we are going to start playing in a minute.

Yes, we do as Archer brings down the ball out of the sky and via Azaz, the ball goes out to Fellows on the right. He lines up weak-link Ogilvie who blocks it away for a corner. In it comes from Wee Man, headed clear and top-scorer Ryan Manning is horribly off-balance as he lashes it high into the crowd.

Then an incident as a ball gets pumped down right hand side and Ogilvie is trying to stop Fellows getting to it and the Pompey goalkeeper Schmid comes running out like a complete twat and the two Pompey players. Free kick against Fellows of course for the merest brush on Ogilvie‘s back, but the two Pompey players have managed to injure each otherand eventually the goalkeeper plays on before going down again and having to be replaced by Killop, who apparently is about as inexperienced as it gets.

There’s more danger from a familiar source at the other end straight after as Murphy once again works a yard and a cross low into the mixer which is not dealt with and Bishop should do better than swinging at it and toe ending it wide.

In a rare monet of anything from us, Downes and Charles combined to release Fellows on the right and his low cross is met by the sliding Azaz and he can only divert it to Archer who flicks it goalwards and at least makes the sub keeper makes some sort of save.

What a first half that was. Absolute fucking shite from us, allowing Pompey to comfortably negotiate things and have more threat themselves than we managed. I have no idea why the fuck we are not pushed higher up the pitchand there seems to be huge gaps between our defence, midfield and strikers.

Saints look a bit better at the start of the second half, but there’s still not being much football played as a boom upfield by Baz is misjudged by Poole, the Pompey centre back and that gives Archer a sniff and he gets there before Killop and round the keeper but instead of shooting with his left foot, he tries to pull it back and there’s no one there. The structure of both teams is all over the place in that instant and Pompey lose the ball up the pitch and Flynn Downes careers through the middle and travels from the halfway line to the edge of the box but it doesn’t get the shot away before a perfectly executed tackle comes in. The excitement levels are relatively absolutely off the fucking scale now with Manning’s cross being flicked away as far as Fellows but he sees his shot on the spin flicked over the bar for a corner. Can we all take this increase in the excitement levels?

And it duly dies down for another ten and with not a lot happening it’s time for substitutions and Azaz, Archer and Downes are replaced with Ross Stewart, Adam Armstrong and Caspar Jander, with us basically going to a 4-4-2 formation, I presume to try and put more pressure on the Pompey back line. With that Pompey have their first shot on target as Devlin has to go from fully 40 yards and Baz just falls on it comfortably.

As was the case against Watford, Adam Armstrong is immediately lively and sees a shot blocked before getting up well and flicking a ball inside to Fellows, who is about to pull the trigger when a very good tackle comes in from Pompey sub Williams to clear the danger for a corner.

82, 83 and we change the wingers with Fellows and Wee Man departing for Robinson and Scienz. Immediately though we doze off to Pompey’s one attacking threat and Murphy again puts a great ball over from the left with two Pompey players going in on it and the ball eventually dribbles wide off of the boot of Devlin but the flag is up anyhow.

We are still not learning and Murphy it at it again a few minutes later any puts over another cross/shot which everyone goes sliding in on but no one can reach and it’s wide for another goal kick. Honestly, Murphy has put more good balls in today than all of the other players put together.

Saints are trying to get the ball out to Scienza, but Swanson, who was already been booked kicks him up in the air every time the ball goes near him but this referee is not making any strong decisions today so he’s gonna get away with it. From the resulting free kick, Manning’s delivery is headed behind for a corner and when it comes in from Scienza, up goes THB but is leaning back and puts the header over the bar.

Final whistle and the Pompey fans do their usual thing and celebrate a draw at St Mary’s like they’ve just won the World Cup and their media are sharpening their pencils to report on how they actually won. Anyway, for fucks sake, that was dreadful – a real non-performance not befitting the occasion. Flat as fuck and 0-0 was what the game deserved. As far as we’re concerned, Will Still has so far completely failed to unlock any sort of attacking plan with the squad and until he does, we cannot be serious about any possibility of getting promoted.

The first half in particular today was absolutely pitiful in terms of the lack of football played, lack of urgency and the lack of creativity. We got the ball down and played, a total of three times in that first half in wide areas and every time we caused problems but we just didn’t do it enough. The progression through midfield was non-existent and we basically knocked it around for a bit in the back before pumping it long towards Cameron. Archer, who tried his best but was given an absolute diet of shite to feed off of. Unless it was a set piece, we were never going to score (and our set pieces were shit) and I don’t think we worked their substitute goalkeeper at all (and he looked Lumley-esque). I really don’t know what the fuck we were trying to achieve in that first half and the second half was better (not difficult) but it was too little too late.

I am still not seeing any defined style from Will Still’s team and I expected to see it today but there was nothing. The only things you can praise are the efforts put in by the players. THB and Stephens competed well with Bishop and we ultimately kept a clean sheet. Shea Charles covered a lot of ground in midfield and got stuck in when needed and Mads Roerslev had a tough game but he was playing against Pompey‘s best player and stuck to his task pretty well. Up front, Cameron Archer worked really hard and Adam Armstrong made a difference in attempting to light up the attack when he came on. The wingers Wee Man and Fellows did okay when they got the ball but they weren’t given it enough. None of the players played badly really, so you have to look somewhere else when the team just doesn’t perform and you have to look at the manager in this instance I think he chose the right team but the way we played was not right at all.

Will Still talks about finding ways to win games of football but you don’t win games of football by being passive like we were in the first half, especially at home. He said we wasted the first half and he’s right, but he had the power to change that. It’s easy enough to get an instruction onto the pitch to tell the team to press higher but he clearly didn’t do that. We just sat there and allowed the first half to happen. It was if we were scared to press – why? Pompey are never going to play though us so why invite them to half way, where they can find Bishop with more accuracy from half-way than if they were doing it from their own penalty area? He talked about us being better in the second half, but we still didn’t put Pompey under any pressure and once they’d settled for a point, we did nothing about making them anxious that they would somehow lose it.

There are two ways of looking at this game. You can either look at it through the context of the whole season and that brings mitigating factors into play like the fact that it’s a new squad that’s bedding down and that everyone is still getting used to each other or that we had players away with the international break. Alternatively , you can look at it in the context of today and a derby against that lot down the road and if you just do that, then that performance was simply not good enough, lacking in ability, intensity and tactical plan. I thought before the game that I would definitely back us to finish higher than them by the end of the season but I was not 100% convinced that we would win today and that come true obviously. I still believe in the first bit but that’s all we can really take from this game and it may be a little bit of blind faith because there are undoubted issues still to be addressed.

I don’t know what it is with Saints midfield but I suspect that there may be a problem with playing Charles and Downes together. There shouldn’t be because they should be dominating games but they just aren’t. There was not enough forward passes from the midfield today, or looking to pass forwards, so we ended up constantly giving the ball away by going long. Pompey pressed us and we had no answer except shelling it into they sky. They seemed to be too deep for me and so we ened up with a big gap between Downes and Charles and Azaz.

Just what is the attacking plan? If it’s to get the ball to Archer in a way that he can use it then we are not looking to slide him in the channels. I guess that that was the job of Azaz but he needs the service from the midfield two and they weren’t progressing the ball. We are looking to bomb it long or cross balls in, which really doesn’t suit Archer of course. The alternative is to play Ross Stewart but he is currently doing nothing in his substitute appearances to suggest he would be the answer, barely getting a touch of the ball when he’s on the pitch.

Mousinho had a good day as Pompey manager but he spoiled it at the end with his post match comments. The first thing you do in a derby when you are the away side is try and slow the game down to prevent the home team getting a fast start because if the home team gets a fast start and maybe scores an early goal, then the crowd gets up and everything can go very wrong very quickly. Mousinho sent his team out to quieten the game down the way they did that was by time wasting from the first kick of the ball. The game kicked off, Pompey won a throw in the right back area and they took the best part of a minute to take it. You also know that this level in particular, referees aren’t gonna do anything about it, because they are largely useless. With that goal achieved they caused us a few problems mainly by pressing and getting the ball out to their one decent attacking threat, Murphy on the left and because that was working, they kept doing it and it wasn’t until about the hour that they decided that a point was good for them and they contained the little threat we had quite comfortably.

So, he had a good day but his comments after the game about the incident where two of his players got injured were a bit of a sign that he was letting the occasion get the better of him. The Pompey left back Ogilvie was waiting for the slightest touch from Fellows before diving and that is exactly what happened. Fellows barely touched him and he dived. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know his goalkeeper had come rushing out like a fucking idiot and he dived straight into his goalkeeper and they both got injured. How Mousinho can try and pin that on Fellows when one of his players has dived and one of his players is miles out of position, is a bit disingenuous to say the least. Also, the stupid comment after his handshake shenanigans when he basically says you don’t need the managers of Pompey and Southampton to be friends. Apparently he was good mates with Russell Martin, so I guess that only applies when he feels like it. You’ve had a good day John, so no need to be a dick and play to the gallery.

There’s was much talk before the game of it being a blood and thunder derby but the referee saw to it that it was never going to be that by giving a stream of soft free kicks and breaking it up, which led to it being slowed down and generally being a poor game. I think that’s what the referee wanted because he’d have had to actually make big decisions if it hadn’t been like that. Swanson for example, would have been sent off 9 times out of 10 for the challenges he put in. Maybe all the focus on past issues at this game, with everyone seemingly focussed on fan behaviour, meant that he decided to make it as low key as possible. If that was the case then he did his job. Regardless, we should be good enough to rise above it and find ways to win against fairly limited opposition at home.

Anyway, now it’s over and this derby becomes just another game and not one that wil live long in the memory. On to Hull next week and a full week of training to try and get things to spark in an attacking sense. If we don’t manage that then it’s going to be another dull afternoon but there’s always hope that next week will be the day it clicks.

As for the return against Pompey. At Fratton Park, their fans will demand they have a go and that they make a fast start and we’ll have to quieten all that down and play our own game. My hope is that our team will be bedded down by then and be playing a lot better than we are currently. Until then we’ll have to put up with Pompey media and social media celebrating their 0-0 win.

I went home and the same copper was still on the bridge over the M27, still looking at her phone. She hadn’t moved in five hours.

Up the fucking Saints.