Source: Telegraph
Hull City 0 Portsmouth 0: match report
To misquote Dame Vera Lynn, they’ll meet again and we all know where and we all know when. Next season. In the Championship.
If ever a game lived down to its billing as a relegation six-pointer, this was it, with the stench of demotion fears hanging over the KC Stadium from the first minute of this awful contest to the last.
The standard was so poor that the only surprise was that both defences managed clean sheets, although when they did inadvertently do their bit to liven things up, the strikers fluffed their lines.
Hull, without injury jinxed-Jimmy Bullard, were booed off at half-time and on the final whistle by their own supporters, who taunted manager Phil Brown with chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing” when he replaced Stephen Hunt with Richard Garcia.
The Hull cause was also hindered by the absence of American international Jozy Altidore, who apologised to supporters on Twitter for turning up late for the game and was subsequently dropped by Brown.
“What’s Twitter?” asked Brown before warning “he will be disappointed” as the loss of two weeks’ wages loomed. “Jozy was on the bench until 2.10, when I decided to change it. It is unacceptable. All he said was 'I’m sorry I’m late’.”
Portsmouth’s on-field plight was again overshadowed by off-field problems as the club last night admitted their new owner, Ali al-Faraj, was interviewed by a Saudi newspaper despite claiming on Friday it was a fake.
Faraj, interviewed with his brother Ahmed by Asharq Al-Awsat, was quoted as saying he had bought Portsmouth “purely as an investment” and was “no billionaire”.
Portsmouth had issued a statement in which Faraj claimed the quotes were “completely false and untrue”.
The club, who suggested that the interview was the “work of a third party”, threatened legal action against any media outlet that published details from the article.
But Portsmouth have told The Sunday Telegraph they now accept Faraj spoke to the Saudi newspaper although they did not comment on the content of the article and said he believed the conversation was not for publication.
