Hart on draw at Stoke

Paul Hart, and of course Brian Kidd, retained their unbeaten start to their caretaker reign as the Pompey management team following the draw at Stoke at the weekend, but Hart felt that we deserved to win.

These are some of his post match thoughts, with some of my own...

Hart on not winning
'I think we were unfortunate not to win. We scored a very good goal, had weathered the storm and defended like Trojans.'

Stoke are a tough, tough side to break down - as said prior to the game, plenty can testify to this - and we coped with their threat, or lack of, well. The defending that we had to do we did well, and are starting to look a much more resilient side once again - the strength that we had last season.

We might not have shown a great amount going forward, in terms of clear-cut opportunities, but took the chances that we had. To be fair, Pompey specs aside, in what was not the greatest game ever - although to be honest I do not think it was as bad as it might have been made out - we did seem the more likely to do something, and we finally did, only for the couple of minutes of madness...

All in all a draw was probably the fairest result though, had we been beaten it would have been criminal, then again Stoke fans 'probably' would feel the same!

Hart on that 'penalty'
'But we didn't have time to get into a defensive shape to defend before the penalty, which wasn't a penalty, simple as that.

'Johnson has leant (towards the ball) but his hands are nowhere near.

'When you are faced with a decision that you feel isn't quite the right one it knocks you back a bit and I think we were still reeling from that decision (when they conceded the second goal).'

It was never a penalty in a million years, but it was as the ref shockingly gave it!

This decision rocked us, so the second goal being conceded in quick success had a lot to do with that. This said professional footballers should soon regain focus, but with such a poor decision given against you it is tough and they are afterall only human...

Speaking of tough though, we showed real mental toughness and resilience to force our way back into the game to earn the injury time equaliser - would we have managed this in the not so distance past?

All in all we aimed for 4pts from the 6 available against Citeh and Stoke, despite a little disappointment at not getting 6 out of 6, when this looked on for a while, to fight back and ensure we did get that points and met the target pleased me - bring on the Chelski!

PLAY UP POMPEY!

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