Mama said there be days like this,
There’ll be days like this, my Mama said.

She just forgot to mention that they’d happen so often.

I suspect I wasn’t the only one in the North East to call Stephen Wright several very rude names when he scored that own goal to ultimately condemn us to a trip to the south coast rather than the midlands. Having watched the youth team emulate their first team counterparts on Wednesday night by letting in not one, but two, last minute equalisers then fluffing the penalty shoot-out, I was in a pretty despondent mood on Thursday. The came the news that Turner, Reid, Gordon, Richardson, and Cattermole were all fit and likely to be available, and I cheered up considerably. With that lot back, raring to go, and eager to get the nightmare at the Bridge out of our system, the general feeling was that we’d blow Pompey away.

So we were up before some folks were even abed, and away down the road in the eventual sunshine. We found a couple on pubs we’d managed to miss on previous visits, along with the various protests the Pompey faithful ad tried to organise – they simply didn’t know who they were supposed to be protesting at or about, as their ownership is so much of a mystery. We took our seats, and awaited the red and white onslaught amid chants of “Pay up Pompey, Pompey pay up.”

Gordon
Bardo Da Silva Turner Richo
Hendo Meyler Cana Zenden
Bent Jones

It all looked to be going according to plan as we pushed forward, and even Turner got in a cross which Jones put just wide. Henderson was causing the home side problems with his runs down the right, and when he won a throw Zenden put it in, Turner got the vital touch on, and Bent did what Bent tends to do and it was 1-0. To be honest, it would have been no surprise had we scored at least one more in the first half, as Pompey were every bit as bad as Chelsea had been good last Saturday. But, us being Sunderland, we didn’t and Pompey, who’d managed absolutely nothing coming forward to worry us, got in a weak, loopy header from Utaka just before the break. Where was Gordon? Nowhere near where he should have been, and the ball dropped in for 1-1. Jesus, does any other side let that sort of thing happen? Probably, but not as often as we seem to.

The second half saw us sink to Pompeys level of performance, and after about fifteen minutes, away went Utaka and made it 2-1. Horrors. We lacked shape, and couldn’t find it as Portsmouth raised their game and got a few decent efforts in. Bent had a free kick well saved, then Meyler made way for Reid and, at last, we looked to have a proper pattern to our play. Reidy put in a number of decent balls, Healy and Campbell came on for Bardsley and Jones as we tried to throw caution to the wind, but to no effect. We did claim a goal when the ball looked to have crossed the line before being cleared at the post, but I’ve yet to see that on the TV and it would be stupid to doa Fat Sam and blame the ref for our inability to win this one. It’s hard to put your finger on exactly we were doing wrong, and it would be unfair to pick on one particular player. Meyler struggled to make and impact and Richo, at time, looked disinterested - particularly when having started a decent passage of play and he wasn’t in the right place to help it continue. Cana looked almost back at home, while Zenden kept a bit of width on the left. Defensively, we looked not too bad apart from the goals, and up front Jones and Bent had precious little to feed off.

Man of the Match: Henderson, who was the pick of the midfield and set up the move that forced our goal.

Just the league, then. Keep the Faith

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