South Coast Derby trips to Fratton Park seem to be all about the narratives. Those narratives of course are all about Pompey, the bestest fans, the bestest ground, the bestest atmosphere, the bested hostility and the bestest soap dodging c*** with the bell and all that. You can’t read an article about this particular game without it being some sort of massive rim job with those from the East side of Hampshire on the receiving end. What the media want is for Saints to be lambs to the slaughter and just buckle in the face of all of it. Our players are hopefully understanding all this and thinking “fuck that”.

Sadly, with our current set of players there is a very real chance that it may come to pass that they don’t fancy it and they don’t perform and they don’t manage the game well. When we last went down there in the League in 2011, we had leaders in our team like Sir Rickie, Adam Lallana, Jose Fonte, Kelvin Davis and Dean Hammond and the squad was filled with experienced players like Richard Chaplow, Fraser Richardson and Danny Fox. Compare that to now in terms of personalities and characters – there is no comparison.

It’s undoubtedly been the case this season that we have had many occasions to question the character of the players in red and white as they have collapsed at places like Hull, Middlesbrough, Oxford, Blackburn and Norwich. What’s to say that they are going to have the mental fortitude to not collapse at Fratton Park. Those defeat that we had a few weeks ago against teams in the bottom three might also be relevant as well as we basically weren’t up for the battle and didn’t impose ourselves on the game.

The win against Sheffield United however showed something different. It showed a team that was prepared to battle out a game to hold onto what they had earned earlier on in the game. We looked more compact as a team and we looked a bit more physical, with the likes of Ross Stewart, Jack Stephens and Welington coming into the team and it’s undeniable that the formation change helped us greatly.

To that end, though not remotely a religious man, I am saying a silent prayer to myself that Tonda does not fuck around with what served us so well on Wednesday night, because that is exactly the kind of performance that we are going to need to get the result we want from this game. If Tonda shits his pants and goes for the three central defenders, then I feel that we will just be inviting pressure and that’s the one thing we cannot afford to do in this game. We don’t want to give them any encouragement. What you absolutely cannot do in a Derby is to allow the home team to start well, maybe get an early goal and that in turn brings the crowd massively into it and from then on in, the day can go South very quickly. That’s exactly what happened when we got battered down there in 2005. Tonda has to have his big boy pants on and stand up today and get things right. That includes any dealings with John Mousinho, who of course, was a bit of a twat at St Mary’s earlier on this season. Tonda should be seeing this as a real Him versus Me situation that he has to win over the course of the 90 minutes.

Pride is everything in this game, but forgetting all that for a second, the result can be very significant to the outcomes for the respective clubs for the rest of the season, especially if we win. If we could win down there, then we will be feeling very good about ourselves and then you never know, we may be able to go on a run and sneak into the playoffs. If we win, it will also drop Pompey right into the shit in the bottom three. The fact that I can say that is significant because regardless of anything else, they are a pretty shite football team. This is a very substandard Championship this season, and Pompey are currently in the bottom three, which tells you that they are not a good side. We are not much better of course but we are better. Their recent form is semi-decent and better than ours, but we need to put doubts in their mind and make them realize that we are better than them. We didn’t do that in the first game at St Mary’s, and we played with fear for some obscure reason.

The key is to start well and silence the crowd. They did it to us at St Mary’s by wasting time from the first minute, and they were aided by the referee who didn’t want to make it a blood-and-guts game at all, and he ensured that that was never going to happen. If we get similar today, it might actually help us, but I bet we don’t. The way to win this game is to obviously get the first goal and then not give them any encouragement and not give them any foothold to build up any sort of head of steam.

I have largely avoided social media in the build up to this game, but you can’t help seeing some of it from Pompey fans. They love nothing more than commenting on Saints social media accounts and giving it the big one, whilst also getting their excuses in early because our budget is bigger etc and they’re coming out with the usual bollocks about how fucking brilliant they are as fans and the atmosphere and you’ll never have what we’ve got. Oh do fuck off. Everyone supports their club, that’s what you’re supposed to do, you fucking idiot. The main difference I find between Saints and Pompey fans is the Saints fans are a bit more humble and will never be shouting from the rooftops saying they’re the best or anything but many Pompey fans will shout that they are the best fans with the best ground and genuinely believe it. It’s fucking tedious. With any luck, we can collect all the receipts from comments like this and throw it back in their faces on Sunday afternoon.

The question the players want to be asking themselves is who wants to be the next Steve Moran? Who wants to be the next Micky Channon, Marian Pahars or James Beattie? Who wants to write their name in the history books as a Saints hero because it’s games against that lot, especially ones at Fratton Park, that define your legacy, even if you don’t achieve much else as a Saints player.

My message to the Saints players is just make sure you turn up and make sure you stay disciplined. Remember that it’s 11 against 11 and if we put in as much effort as they do, we will be better than them and it becomes likely that we win the game. Respond badly to a setback or respond badly to the atmosphere and noise then we will go under. Rise above it however and make yourself and tthe team, one that will be remembered in years to come.

Bring it on.

Team news and Tonda has deviated from my atheists’ prayer of sticking with the same team and there are three changes. James Bree has returned from half a season of working under the genius of Nathan Jones and is straight into the team at right back. Adam Armstrong has come back into the team in place of Ross Stewart, which I assume is down to making sure that Ross is not out for the next three months. I can sort of understand both of these changes, but the weird one is that Tom Fellows has been left out for Kuryu Matsuki. Why does Tonda have to pull a random one in this game? Too fucking clever by half. As a result, I guess there’s an advantage in that the bench looks strong with the aforementioned Stewart and Fellows joined by the likes of Shea Charles and all the usual suspects. A quick glance down Pompey’s team tells me that they’re going to be pretty direct, with neither of their recognized central defenders playing and one-goal-this-season man Colby Bishop upfront.

Away we go and Ogilvie, who made the headlines in the game at St Mary’s by diving into his own goalkeeper under challenge from the beast that is Tom Fellows, executes his first flop to the turf early on under the irresistible force of a challenge by Iron Man Matsuki. High into the mixer it comes, and Adams rises to head the ball wide. I think that’s going to be a threat; we have to deal with that more than once this afternoon.

There has been no football played so far as Saints are going long at every opportunity, probably in a effort to quieten everything down. It’s ok but Armstrong isn’t going to win much in the air, so at some point we have to try and play. We decide it’s time and Matsuki decides to play some football with a lovely little flick in midfield that sends the ball inside to Azaz, who does what he’s in the team for and plays a perfect ball through to Armstrong, whose first touch to get out of his feet is brilliant. Time stands still momentarily, and he produces a piss-weak effort at the near post, and the onrushing Schmid sticks out a foot to deflect it away. Bollocks, he has to score there, it’s a decent save but that finish is a real nothing effort, near post and no conviction. Had to hit it after the first touch and go across the keeper surely and before he gets set. What it does show is that if we play, then they won’t be able to live with us.

Pompey do produce a few good passes down our right and a low cross comes in from Segecic which causes a bit of an alarm when a shot comes in from the edge of the box and hits Bishop but before he can react to shoot, Captain Jack slides in well to clear the danger.

Our right hand side is definitely looking our most productive area of the pitch and Bree exchanges passes with Matsuki before firing over a low cross which Armstrong connects well with and turns goalwards, but unfortunately it’s close enough to Schmid for him to push it away. Decent play, decent effort, decent safe. Bree is also gettign stuc in well on the right, making the greatest comback since his hairline.

Pompey fortunately win a corner on our left when a poorly attempted step-over by Alli sees the ball bounce off of Bree accidentally and go behind. When the corner comes in, Peretz gets up well to punch it away, and another cross comes in which is not dealt with; it bounces down off a Pompey player to Alli, deep in the penalty area on the left, and his low side-footed effort goes about a yard wide of the far post.

Saints are defending in committed fashion, as we were against Sheffield United in midweek and there’s some more danger on the edge of the box before Welington comes flying across to deflect a shot over the bar and onto the roof of the net. Peretz again deals with the subsequent corner.

Half time and Pompey have had the most possession, but we’ve had the only two real chances and should really be ahead. I can’t get over Armstrong being clean through out of my head. It’s the second touch that gives the goalkeeper the chance to get his angle sorted. So fucking annoying. As a game, it’s been pretty uneventful. It’s been tense but to be honest it looks like two poor-ish sides. We can only hope that our superior quality shines through in the second half, but to be honest I’m still not very hopeful. We have to play more football in their half and keep the ball moving. Maybe the bench will have a positive impact. One thing that’s noticeable that we have barely got the ball out to Scienza because we are kicking it long every single time either from goal kicks or from the goalkeeper’s hands I know that we’re trying to be pragmatic and not give them a sniff but we really should be able to occasionally play through their press instead of trying to go over the top of it all the time. That’s their game but we’ve sunk down to it.

At the start of the second half, it certainly looks like the message has got cross to our players, with Azaz finding Scienza on the wing and he plays it back to Azaz infield, but his balance is all wrong as his side footed shot goes through Armstrong’s legs and Schmid just picks it up. Poor technique from Azaz to be honest because he was falling down and away from the ball as he hit it, instead of leaning into it.

Pompey win a free kick for a foul by Downes and unusually, they don’t lump the ball into the box and instead try to play it out wide left but Bree gets a foot to it and wellies it forward out towards the left wing. Azaz is underneath it and with an absolutely unbelievable touch he brings it out of the sky before passing the ball forward to the clearly onside Scienza who now has a clear run at goal. I know what’s going to happen, all the Saints fans in the ground know what’s going to happen and I dare say all the Pompey fans do as well as the main man skips towards the penalty area, pursued by the flailing Devlin, before drawing the goalkeeper and smashing it past him. He just keeps on running over to the touch line where he was playing in the first half and cupping his ears to the frothing Pompey fans down the side and running all the way to the other end of the ground to celebrate in front of the Saints fans. Wonderful stuff.

We look up for this now and straight from the kick-off, Jander wins the ball in midfield and passes the ball forward to Azaz and he advances to the edge of the box before blazing wildly over the bar. Fuck.

With subs warming up it’s time to see if Tonda can fuck things up for us. It’s more or less Azaz’ last contribution as he is replaced with Shea Charles and Fellows comes on for the clearly knackered Matsuki. Weirdly, it looks like Caspar Jander has gone into the more advanced midfield position instead of Charles, who did the job against Sheffield United. A few minutes later and Ross Stewart is on for Armstrong along with Jay Robinson for the limping Scienza. Four subs when we are winning and on top. It seem an unnecessary gamble.

One of our attacks breaks down and Pompey look to get away down the left through Swanson but Flynn Downes is having none of it and takes him out. Swanson of course thought nothing of doing this kind of thing at St Mary’s but he doesn’t like it when he gets some back of course, so the handbags come out and we end up with about five players from each side joining in with the handbags. Connor Chaplin gets involved, which is the first time I’ve noticed him all game. before the referee eventually sees it all fizzle out and issues yellow cards to Swanson and the laughing Downes.

Pompey win a corner out on our right off as a speculative shot rebounds off of Welington. In it comes and it’s missed at the near post, it hits THB and loops up in the air and Adams bundles it into the net from about six inches out. It looks like it’s hit his hand but that isn’t getting disallowed. Fuck sake. They’ve been fucking shit but they’ve still managed to score.

The crowd are up now of course and Saints respond with not a lot but we do win a corner as Stewart goes up for a ball and it flicks off a defender. Mysteriously, 6 foot 2 Shea Charles is taking them. To be fair, he puts in a good ball and Schmid has a right flap at it, but gets lucky as it bounces off of Robinson‘s leg before he can react.

They’ve got their tails up now and get some possession down the left and a cross is headed out by THB to Marlon Pack, and the player who years ago was punted out the door so Pompey could cheat the embargo on signing players that they had at the time, slices his effort into Row Z. There will be some Pompey fans who wish he could be punted out the door again.

They do seem to me playing with more energy than us as the clock ticks town but luckily it’s all pretty limited with crosses into the box not really aimed at anyone. THB is forced to give away a corner which is always cause for concern, but we survive this one with Alli padding Pompey’s xG with another wild shot from miles out which goes miles wide of the far post.

Full-time as the game peters out into the seemingly inevitable draw. Bollocks. I am unavoidably reminded of 2011 when Rickie Lambert put us ahead and then we let in a shit scrambled headed goal because we didn’t react. Carbon copy today. There will be some people complaining over Pompey‘s equaliser because the last touch is off his hand but that’s never getting given in the Championship, as we’ve seen already this season and also, if there was VAR it is doubtful it would’ve been disallowed anyway because they probably would’ve said it was already over the line or it came off of one body part onto the hand and all that shit, so no point in complaining about it really. Up to the point that we scored, we looked like the only team that was going to win, with our two missed chances in the first half and the fact that we were the only team that could connect anything in the final third and even we didn’t do it much.

The more I think about it, the more I’m questioning Tonda’s in-game management. We lost our way after our goal and didn’t have another meaningful attack after that which was probably down to the four rapid substitutions which pushed Caspar Jander into an unfamiliar number 10 role which did neither us or him any favours. I could understand Fellows and Stewart coming on and who they came on for, but Charles probably should’ve come on for Jander himself or having come on for Azaz, should’ve been pushed into the number 10 role like he was against Sheffield United in midweek. Azaz has just set up a goal and just had a shot and is probably feeling good about himself so why take him off? He’s a streak player so why not leave him on and who knows, maybe a goal or another assist is coming in the next half an hour.

Making four changes within a very short space of time (I know one was enforced) is not ideal in the game of that intensity with that much riding on it. It’s another inexperienced move by our inexperienced manager. Why make all those changes when you’re winning and on top? I reckon the pre-game pre-planned spreadsheet came out again. No need for it. I understand the need for pragmatism today and not messing about in defence but the balance was a bit wrong. Every time we played any football, we opened them up but there’s just wasn’t enough of it, particularly after we scored.

There’s always this overriding fear that Tonda is trying to be too fucking clever, which is something that came through from the initial team selection. Pompey were desperately short at the back but with Fellows not being on the pitch and Scienza barely being given the ball, we struggled to create anything. However, thanks to some brilliant play by Matsuki and a wonderfully weighted through ball by Azaz, Adam Armstrong simply has to score and he simply has to go across the goalkeeper and he has to simply not take that second touch which gave Schmid the chance to close the angle down further. No complaints though with Armstrong‘s contribution to the second effort which was a good hit from a very good Bree cross, forcing Schmid to react well.

The frustrating thing is is that we concede an equaliser to a team who didn’t create a fucking thing from open play. All they had was the ball into the box and second balls and in the main we coped with those really well, mainly through a superb performance by THB. The full-backs James Bree and Welington, dug in and contributed well and Stephens had his usual collection of decent moments.. Peretz also dealt well with the corners int he first half. The goal we let in is again too simple from my point of view. No one wins the header at the near post as it floats over Stewart, the goalkeeper is flapping around and it bounces off of THB and ends up in the net.

Peretz does so many things well but corners are definitely something he needs to improve at. He dealt with a couple well in the first half with commanding punches but wasn’t great on this one again. I really want to like the guy and I think he’s a very good character and I loved him running 60 yards to get involved to congratulate Flynn Downes after he had smashed into one of their players and caused a bit of a ruck. That was a particular highlight. Aside from the goal of course, my favourite incident of the game was of course Flynn Downes cynically and deliberately taking out Zack Swanson and kicking off a bit of a brawl. Swanson rightly deserved it for kicking us all over the park at St Mary’s and being a time wasting dick. For Flynn to start the whole thing and then come away laughing, was particularly satisfying. Swanson said afterwards that the incident kickstarted their comeback. Bullshit. They just carried on throwing balls into the mixer like they’d done all game.

Then there was Leo. He didn’t have the best of games and at the start of the second half, seemed to be losing heart a little bit but give him the ball in the right areas and he is the one who is going make it happen and unlike when Armstrong went through in the first half, there was never any sort of feeling that he was going to miss and the celebration was something else as well. It’s just a shame that he had to go off with an injury soon after because replacing him with J-Rob, along with pushing Jander further forward, meant that our attacking play disappeared and when that happens, the opposition always feel a little bit more emboldened to throw players forward and get on the front foot.

The first player reaction after the game was from Leo, talking about his celebration and the fact that it was a bit of a response to the fact that he was pulled at and spat out by the front row of Pompey fans when he got too close to them. It struck me that when fans who have too much cocaine for breakfast and basically want to work out all their anger on something, they usually get a seat next to the away fans and scream at them for 90 minutes, but when you’re at Fratton Park, you’ve got a second option, which is why you see all these rabid fucking idiots in the front row because they know they can get close to a player then and pull them or spit at them. If you spit at anyone then you really are a fucking animal. Maybe it’s not like it against other teams, but I do remember an incident with Luke O’Nien against Sunderland – maybe it’s the red and white stripes and I guess when you’re a coked up inbred that you can’t tell the difference. Maybe in future South Coast Derbies, the police ought to look at closing the front three rows on all the Portsmouth sections down the touchlines on the grounds of health and safety of the opposition players. Would you want to be spat at by that lot?

Overall, it was a fair result probably but we didn’t manage the game as well as we should have once we went ahead, which is a definite echo of that game in 2011. In that season however, after two draws in the derbies, Saints went up and Pompey went down. I honestly can’t see the first part of that happening again but the second part might because virtually every other team in the league can defend set pieces and balls being thrown into the box better than we can, so Pompey are definitely going to have to improving in forward areas to get themselves out of trouble and to have a rerun of these two games next season. Regardless of the football, they are brilliant occasions with an edge that you just don’t find in any other games. A word too for the referee who unlike the pillock we had at St Mary’s, did at least allow a few challenges and for it to develop into a proper derby game. I didn’t agree with everything that he gave of course but given the magnitude of the game, I think he refereed it pretty well. Part of me hopes that we have these games more often because I don’t think playing them regularly would diminish it at all, but on the other hand, if Pompey go down then I will not mourn their passing.

Tonda was presented with more evidence today, that we should have been playing with a back four all season. With the introduction of Bree and the return from injury of Charles and Stewart, we have a bit more physicality about us now. We have to play more football within that more attritional framework but the signs are there that we can be a better side going forward, as long as he doesn’t fuck about with it too much. The back four were all excellent today and should continue. The value of a well-drilled familiar back four and keeper seems to be lost on a lot of modern managers for some reason but having been a shitshow in defence all season, we really need to settle things down. I never thought James Bree would be missed but you see the value straight away in a season where we have basically played Fellows, Roerslev and Jelert as rotating right back / wing back options. Bree is of course more physical than all of them so it really should be his place to lose.

A major plus point from today was that despite some of the Tonda strangeness with the starting line-up and the sub avalanche, no one took a backward step and no one caved in to the hyped Fratton Park atmosphere. We are a team with a reputation for caving in and if we don’t, then maybe the media outlets need to find a new narrative… but I doubt they will.

So, we go home and back down the M27 to breathe some fresh air and the usual moral victories are being claimed by fans of both sides. Some facts for you – Saints haven’t won at Fratton Park in the league for 50 years, Pompey haven’t beaten Saints in any game for 16 years. Facts seem to be largely secondary around the South Coast Derby, so for now, Pompey can have the ‘We were pressing at the end’ Trophy and the ‘Lower Budget’ Award, and we’ll have the ‘We scored a better goal than You’ Trophy. Both sets of fans will lay claim to the ‘Your fans were Quiet’ Award. See you next season, perhaps.