'Pompey their own Achilles heel again'

Pompey can consider the start to the season an ‘okay’ one following a point against Blackburn on Saturday afternoon.

We’ve beaten sides both above us and below us in the last two weeks, we have not taken points where we perhaps could’ve done, and some of the teams we’ve been well beaten by have gone on to climb the table as it begins to take shape.

Those defeats weren’t quite as bad as perhaps they appeared at the time.

However, if Pompey are to break the mould on a relegation battle this season, then Saturday afternoon’s game really ought to have resulted in three points rather than one.

And as a result of outcomes like Saturday, this season will likely be all about coming top of a bottom eight again.

With the game as it was at both 1-0 and 1-1, our inability to punish our opposition when we had them down on the canvas through chance after chance (and big chances at that) will always leave you susceptible to a sucker punch. That came in the form of Ryoya Morishita‘s effort putting Blackburn 2-1 up.

As well as John Mousinho’s side did to wrestle back something from the game, it’s only through poorly conceded goals that we were in that position in the first place.

Pompey’s Achilles heel is so often themselves, particularly at Fratton Park and we saw that in abundance on Saturday.

As the home side with the majority of possession, 22 shots, seven on target and dominating in every major metric apart from yellow cards, you’d suggest would be conducive to a winning outcome.

The flair and intent in an attacking sense is certainly there, embodied by Ryan Kavuma-McQueen’s outstanding work to tee up Colby Bishop‘s leveller. With that in mind, a long term injury to what looked to be a star defender in Benjy Arthur is a troublesome addition to an already shaky looking defence.

Just the small matter of one of the fiercest rivalries in English football to come in three short weeks.

Find more from Tom at the Fournilwrittenalloverit YouTube channel.