Royals Send Pompey Bottom

07 March 2012 11:38
Reading 1 Portsmouth 0

Noel Hunt's goal saw Reading defeat Portsmouth in a dire match at the Madjeski Stadium last night.

The result meant that Pompey are now at the bottom of the Championship following Doncaster's win at Nottingham Forest and after watching the performance yesterday, you'd know why Pompey were bottom.

For all of the effort and endeavour shown by Michael Appleton's men, there was no creativity, nobody out wide to deliver crosses and therefore no efforts on target.

The most annoying thing was that Reading hardly played well themselves and didn't give Stephen Henderson much to do. Teams don't have to play well to beat us anymore and that spells trouble.

Pompey started the first half brightly but always struggled to defend crosses coming in from the right, with Alex Pearce and Kaspars Gorkss sending free headers over the crossbar.

However, Hunt made his count when converting Jason Roberts' cross midway through the first half.

The closest Pompey came to scoring was a George Thorne shot in the box that was charged down by the Reading defence as the bluntness of our attack was there for all to see. Adam Federici may as well have been sitting in a deck chair.

The second half was even worse than the first as Reading were content to sit on their lead and comfortably deal with what little Pompey had to throw at them.

Scott Allan was the brightest player in a black shirt as his mazy run might have led to something had he not been crowded out, whilst his two long range efforts were nowhere near finding the target.

The game had become so tiresome that some Pompey fans were more interested in Arsenal's comeback against AC Milan, whilst others were singing ironic songs like "we're gonna win the leaue" as well as pretending we had scored a goal.

When things like that start happening you know you're in trouble and as much as I admire Michael Appleton he really has to change the tactics if we're to have any hope of getting out of this mess.

But with a difficult trip to Brighton coming up this Saturday it seems like things will get worse before they get better.

Pompey Player Ratings

Stephen Henderson: 5 - Distribution was poor.

Aaron Mokoena: 5 - Never got forward when he had plenty of space in front of him.

Jason Pearce: 6 - Solid enough but lumped the ball to nobody too often.

Ricardo Rocha: 7 - Standout performer once again.

Greg Halford: 5 - Not the best return to his former club, wingers got the better of him.

Joel Ward: 5 - Never really in the game.

George Thorne: 5 - Doesn't look like the same player we had on loan the first time.

Hayden Mullins: 5 - Often played too deep.

David Norris: 5 - No effect.

Scott Allan: 6 - Pompey's brightest player but no end product.

Luke Varney: 6 - Pace caused a few problems.

Substitutes

Jamie Ashdown

Adam Webster

Kelvin Etuhu

Dave Kitson (Norris 79): N/A - Don't think he touched the ball.

Marko Futacs (Allan 84): N/A - Didn't change anything.

Source: FOOTYMAD