A touch of realism

I think that the weekend 0-0 draw with West Ham enabled us to bring a bit of perspective to things, and maybe - myself included - might have needed it for us to take stock of things.

Expectation levels seemed to have gone through the roof recently, so whilst I was admittedly disappointed that we 'only' drew at the weekend - with the draw feeling like defeat after the missed penalty! - it did serve as a bit of a wakeup call for us not to get overly carried away, because as far as we have come we still have a long way to go and we are not quite as good - yet! - as we might have thought.

Do not get me wrong 4 wins out of 5 - with 3 of these being on the road - is phenomenal form, but we do have to remain grounded and maybe we had got a little ahead of ourselves - I say this as the atmosphere was disappointing by our usual high standards. We started well but the West Ham fans - who are good admittedly - out did us, this is a rarely achieved feat against Pompey, virtually unheard of at Fortress Fratton.

We are still flying, so we need to remember this, but we also have to remember we have a long way to go yet until we reach the level that maybe people might have started to think we already had - but we cannot let these expectation levels impact on our support at the Fortress, when we are flat so too are the team more often than not, so we raise each other.

It has been a fantastic season so far, but we need to keep remembering how far we have come so quickly, so we also have to remember we need to walk before we can run. This fantastic season could get even better but lets keep a sense of realism about things too. Sure we must be disappointed or frustrated when things do not go quite our way but lets also keep things in perspective, we might not have won this 5th game running, but we extended the unbeaten run.

We have to 'bask' in the glory as I recently said, but we also have to take the rough with the smooth - and if the 'roughest' it gets is 'only' a draw at home that cannot be bad can it - and, an old cliché I know but take things a step at a time, or a block of games at a time.

I am not trying to be all doom and gloom as I am as caught up in things as most and really do think we are in for a great season, but we have to maintain that sense of realism and not heap too much pressure on. We are in a great position and I genuinely do feel that on our day we can beat anyone now, but lets just enjoy the ride, get excited but not carried away too much...

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