Pompey crash out

Pompeys European adventure is over.
And to be fair it deserves to be, Pompey were nothing short of awful, conceding 3 goals to 2 defensive errors, 1 of which will get all the 'Calamity James' headlines back again.

Pompey started very much like they did in both Portugese games, conceeding in the first few minutes, this time Sol Campbell showing the rustiness of the tin man to let Dzenko free to score.

Next up in a catalouge of errors and Benaglio gave a hint of things to come by spilling Traores cross straight to Defoe to sidefoot home, things were looking up.
Arnold Mvuemba justified his selection next by letting fly and scoring with the aid of a deflection, Pompey went 2-1 up and had it all to play for.

But Pompey showed all their defensive frailties to let Gentner score and equalise, james was done by a dummy and Belhadj was slow coming off the post to play his man onside, Pompey were throwing it away again.

Second half and Pompey were first to show, on a quiet personal night Kranjcar smacked in a cracking free-kick but found only the woodwork, news was filtering through that Braga had come from behind in Holland and the game was really must win now.

At the back Pompey were taking it in turn to give it away, Distin was as culpible as the rest and got lucky when misplaced effort didn't cost us.
James had obviously been taking note, a bread and butter backpass reached him, and inexplicably he played a lazy pass straight to the on rushing Misimovic who had the simple task of first sending James the wrong way and then rounding him into an empty net, the game was up.

It could of been worse. Moments later Campbell lunged in on Dzeko, little contact was made but the ref pointed to the spot. James partially atoned for his cock-up with a low save to his right, but it was really a case of papering over cracks now.
Traore left the field with a hamstring injury to put Pompey down to 10 men, but we never had another sniff, we lost, Braga won, Europe bade farewell, you just have to hope Pompey have got a taste for it and push on in the league to do it all again.

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