Appy Says! Notts County reaction

Pompey defeats are now a common thing, the usual thing really that you almost expect to happen - this was the case at Notts County on Saturday afternoon, when we lost 3-0.

I can add little as I was not at Meadow Lane, nor was I able to follow this with any commentary at all apart from what I read and what BBC's 'Final Score' updates were telling me as a goals went in each time...

As has happened in all of our league games, bar two, this season we conceded the first goal and as has been the outcome, with all bar three, we were again beaten!

Appy was again left disappointed to lose that first goal, and early on once more: 'the timing of the goals hurt us in a big way. Conceding in the first five minutes of each half left us with a big mountain to climb.

'You've got to get the first goal in games to give yourself an opportunity. We keep kicking ourselves in the teeth by conceding first.'

Having steadied the ship we then did it again, conceded early in the 2nd half: 'we were trying to get back into the game and create some decent chances and then concede again at the start of the second half.

'I didn't see the second goal coming and it came from a long way out, but Mikkel Andersen will be disappointed to concede from that distance.

'I didn't think we had it in us at the end. That's why it was important when the third goal went in that we stayed strong and didn't concede another.'

'Accepting defeat' is something Appy says he wanted in the end, and instead of trying to get back into it, chasing something, he wanted to 'tighten it up' and accept a 3-0 defeat: 'we could have opened up and gone gung-ho at the end and lost by five or six. Sometimes you have to be sensible, take the result on the chin and move on to the next game.'

I am not at all surprised by the defeat, Notts County are a quality side in this league as the table shows, but I would have at least hoped we would have made a better fist of things...

All we can now do is 'keep plugging away' and hope to get something more against Scunthorpe at Fratton next weekend.

Looking at 'the good bits' will be done with players either given that 'arm around them' or 'a rollocking' in the hope of coming back stronger: 'we have to keep plugging away and I believe if you keep doing that over and over again, eventually you're going to get the right results.

'We'll look at the good bits again with the players to remind them what they can do. But the biggest thing we've got to get into their heads is how important that first goal is.

'There's about five or six players struggling with confidence - some will need an arm round the shoulder and some need a rollicking.

'We'll do that during the week and hopefully we'll get a better result at Fratton next Saturday.'

Come on Appy, I love the guy any all that, but most of this team has pretty much been together long enough now to know each other so we should start to be seeing something better (again difficult to comment on Saturday as I was not there) - if our season started on Saturday, as was said it had, then it is basically going to be a continuation of what we had seen before...

You should never 'accept defeat' but I think we long ago accepted that we are woeful away from home, we pretty much always have been apart from that one run some 5-years ago or so, but the worry is that we are just as woeful at home at the moment!!

Fratton MUST start to become a Fortress once more or, even though the bigger picture is of more importance, this season will be a write-off by Christmas...

Scunthorpe, down the bottom end of the table or not as well, will not get much easier but this is the type of game we must look to be winning at Fratton, then again so were the likes of Oldham and Walsall in particular and we all know how they turned out!

PLAY UP POMPEY!

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