[Archived] Blackburn Rovers 3 Portsmouth 0

[Hasta]

Excellent performance and great little boost to our goal difference. The whole day did feel a bit like after the Lord Mayors show and the calm before the storm though.

Nonda played exceptionally well. He'd be a good aquisition if that was his standard week in week out. He's still got 10+ games to win that contract. Samba was immense first half and the Axe was immense all game. I really do think he benefits from playing games. When he doesnt play for a while then gets chucked in he's awful, but when he's involved often he does that job well.

Because the Pompey players didn't throw themselves on the floor at every opportunity and didn't try to crawl their way out of this game.

Or maybe because pompey were nowhere near as good as Leverkusen at closing down in midfield and general defending.

[Paul]

Great result, good performance from everyone and 5-6 players had really good games. Roll on Arsenal, we can get past them and look forward to a real cup-tie with City.

As for the crowd? Awful. Apart from the dismal attendance, where were the missing 8000 from Thursday?, hundreds, if not thousands, were leaving the Family Stand and Riverside with 5-6 minutes to go. Frankly I don't know why you bother to come in the first place if you don't intend to watch the whole game. Traffic can't be the excuse, it's 5.00pm on a Sunday for God's sake. If I played for the team today I'd be wondering why I bothered to turn out.

Seems like 6.00pm Thursday and cheap tickets is more convenient to most people than 3.00pm Sunday for £20? What was the ticket price for this game? To be serious the Arsenal attendance is going to tell us a lot. 25,000 for a reasonably priced competitive (the result mattered) game at 6.00pm; 17,0000 home fans for a run of the mill, it doesn't matter what the result is game, which I presume was priced around £20-25. If we get a big turn out for Arsenal (competitive game, cheap tickets) it will confirm for me the PL is dead and buried. I'm becoming more and more convinced the attendance problem is a direct result of two things; the PL is no longer competitive and is over priced. One-sixth of the town turned out 6.00pm on a thursday night in poor weather to watch a game in which the result mattered. 8000 missing today because the result didn't matter? I reckon we could see 25000+ on Wednesday night. Three games in six days, Pompey was obviously the one to miss.

Thursday night I was excited, today I just turned up to watch.......and really enjoyed the game.

[Paul]

PS - I'll take Nonda ahead of McCarthy if this is what regular games does for him. In recent weeks McCarthy has done little more than stroll around the pitch whilst Nonda is starting to look a bit of a handful. Partnered with Derbyshire we might surprise Arsenal.

[Paul Mellelieu]

I think tickets started at £15 today. And there were no £1 per kid tickets.

Maybe some fans are saving their money for Arsenal

[roversmum]

Well I thoroughly enjoyed this match, it was great to see the enthusiasm and work ethic from the players, if they can keep it up we are going places!

[Ozz]

A thoroughly enjoyable game today, with the visitors providing the simplest of tasks in taking three points. Make no mistake, we could have had ten. I never felt we would lose the game, a goal or even a tackle. I cannot remember one 50-50 being lost.

Chris Samba-cult hero in the making for me-awesome.

Even Zurab and Henchoz ended up in their box, dribbling and skinning Primus, Campbell and Johnson!

And Tugay even had time to get changed and have a brew in the second half.

[Ozz]

[Flopsy]

I take my hat off to Dunn, he's looking quite trim now

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

Paul, lets be honest, if some 13,000 season ticket holders had not gained FREE admission on Thursday coupled with Kids for £1 the attendance would probably have been a damn sight less than todays!

[cn174]

I take my hat off to Dunn, he's looking quite trim now

You'll change your mind when you see his miss right at the end, was a shocker!

[Anti-Dingle-Brigade]

Judging by his miss today, he still has quite a lot of "Beef" in his foot. Bounced right off it and into the BBE

[stuwilky]

Paul, lets be honest, if some 13,000 season ticket holders had not gained FREE admission on Thursday coupled with Kids for £1 the attendance would probably have been a damn sight less than todays!

Does that address where the "missing" 8000 are though?

[Blue blood]

Excellent game - truely enjoyable 1st class stuff from rovers both attacking and defending. We closed them down well, we got stuck in, we were creative and urgent in attack, every one of the 11 played well; you can't ask for anything more.

Ok Pompey were rubbish, the fact Tugs and Henchoz was still out running them in the closing 10 minutes tells it's own tale, but take nothing away from an excellent rovers performance. It was textbook stuff. James showed both sides to his game, playing a hand in the first two rovers goals but making several excellent saves to keep the score to 3-0, and took the banter with the Blackburn end in good spirit. We created a lot, we worked hard, out ran out fought and out played Pompey. I was a tad worried not having several key players in, especially Nelsen's leadership qualities, but the team showed that no one was missed. If we play like this on wednesday Arsenal beware.

Brad: 7 did all he had to do although not troubled often, showed his opposite number the benefit of consistency.

Emerton 8: defended well and supported bentley well, a few little tricks and a couple of forrays to the byline to boot.

Warnock 9: really got stuck in and took his goal well. Supported Gamst excellently.

Samba 9: find off the season, really hope he's fit for wednesday and his substitution was precautionary.

Henchoz 8: always looks like he's struggling, but the reality was he was fairly comfortable all afternoon. His most attacking game i've seen in both spells in a rovers shirt.

Tugay 8: still running after 80+ minutes shows how free he was to dictate the game, which he did.

Mokoena 9: only 2 poor passes all game, it's a shame his passing is so poor because he'd be a top player on recent performances. Was excellent in breaking up the pompey attacks.

Bentley 9: tormented Pompey

MGP 8: good in both attack and defence but got a silly (justified) booking, a few duff corners but created a fair bit.

Nonda 9: tormented pompey. A shocking penalty was the only black mark on an otherwise exemplary performance. Unlucky not to get a hat trick forcing several good saves from the keeper.

Derbyshire 8: One rushed shot aside caused lots of problems for pompey with some excellent running.

subs:

Zurab 8: comfortable at the back, brilliant run which went on for ages and seemed to avoid the whole of their team.

Roberts 6: looked off the pace and frustrated, should've had a pen though.

Dunn 6: didn't really get to grips with the game, missed an easy chance late on

The crowd was disappointing, but the atmosphere was great - although i guess winning 3-0 helps. Still all the say aways missed a cracking game of football arguabley the best rovers performance for some time.

Overall, each and every player showed that if they play on top of the game, we're a match for anyone. More of the same vs arsenal please.

[RevidgeBlue]

Great result, good performance from everyone and 5-6 players had really good games. Roll on Arsenal, we can get past them and look forward to a real cup-tie with City.

As for the crowd? Awful. Apart from the dismal attendance, where were the missing 8000 from Wednesday?, hundreds, if not thousands, were leaving the Family Stand and Rivereside with 5-6 minutes to go. Frankly I don't know why you bother to come in the first place if you don't intend to watch the whole game. Traffic can't be the excuse, it's 5.00pm on a Sunday for God'd sake. If I played for the team today I'd be wondering why I bothered to turn out.

Seems like 6.00pm Thursday and cheap tickets is more convenient to most people than 3.00pm Sunday for £20? What was the ticket price for this game? To be serious the Arsenal attendance is going to tell us a lot. 25,000 for a reasonably priced competitive (the result mattered) game at 6.00pm; 17,0000 home fans for a run of the mill, it doesn't matter what the result is game, which I presume was priced around £20-25. If we get a big turn out for Arsenal (competitive game, cheap tickets) it will confirm for me the PL is dead and buried. I'm becoming more and more convinced the attendance problem is a direct result of two things; the PL is no longer competitive and is over priced. One-sixth of the town turned out 6.00pm on a thursday night in poor weather to watch a game in which the result mattered. 8000 missing today because the result didn't matter? I reckon we could see 25000+ on Wednesday night. Three games in six days, Pompey was obviously the one to miss.

Thursday night I was excited, today I just turned up to watch.......and really enjoyed the game.

Paul, again I think you're vastly overdoing your criticism of the Premier League.

After Thursday night I turned up today with a "couldn't give a monkeys what we do today as long as we win on wednesday." attitude.

Nonda scored with a tricky lob inside a minute and all I could think was, "Why the hell didn't he bury the much easier one on Thursday night when it really mattered?"

What was the incentive today for any floating support faced with the alternative of being able to watch the Carling Cup final live on TV?

All that said I was pleasantly surprised with the performance and the result but it told us very little. Pompey never turned up.

However if we fail to at least perform well against Arsenal (as opposed to necessarily getting the result) in addition to not getting a result against Leverkusen I won't be overly impressed by the demolition of timid opposition today.

But the reason it felt like it didn't matter today was that we're in no great danger of achieving anything in the League this year nor of going down. That can happen in any League by this stage of the season.

And another reason imo that crowds aren't a little better is that we're so darned inconsistent.

[Ozz]

PS_Aaron Mokeona was magnificent today. Superb perfromance.

Supe Axe-o Super Axe-o hello, hello.

We ended up with 4 English men on the pitch too.

[ihateburnley]

Paul, lets be honest, if some 13,000 season ticket holders had not gained FREE admission on Thursday coupled with Kids for £1 the attendance would probably have been a damn sight less than todays!

You don't know that. My ticket for Leverkusen was £5, but I would still have gone had it been £10/15. A knockout contest on an evening against high-profile opposition is always going to get the pulse going.

Portsmouth at home on a Sunday afternoon isn't. I was really undecided whether to go or not today. My ticket was £16 so that's £21 just on match tickets in the space of four days, not to mention the associated costs that go with watching Premiership football such as petrol, parking, food etc.

I'm not for one moment saying that Rovers have been unfair in their ticket policy for one moment - in fact quite the opposite. However, I can understand why a lot of people didn't turn up for todays game.

For me this ten-day period prices up as the following:

Leverkusen - £5

Portsmouth - £16

Arsenal - £10

Bolton - £24

£55 on match tickets alone is too much for me to spend in the space of ten days, and so the obvious choice of missing a game or two would be the Pompey home game and the ###### away game (as it happens I'm not going on Wednesday and won't be going to the Breezeblock either).

-------

On another note, can I just say how in my opinion the pricing for the Arsenal FA Cup game on Wednesday is slightly wrong.

Season Ticket Holders

£15.00 Adults

£5.00 Juniors (Under 16's)

£5.00 Seniors (Over 65's)

£5.00 Young Adults

Non Season Ticket Holders

£20.00 Adults

£10.00 Juniors (Under 16's)

£10.00 Seniors (Over 65's)

£10.00 Club 16- 21 Members

As a 'Club 16-21' member I am loving the cheap tickets, but I must say it just seems so unfair that season-ticket holding adults have to pay more than someone who has chipped just a tenner membership fee into the club. For me a season-ticket holder should be rewarded for their investment in the club and while I'm not saying alternative clubs/schemes are a bad idea, they shouldn't take priority over season-ticket holders. In my opinion they should have used the following price scheme:

Season Ticket Holders

£12.00 Adults

£5.00 Juniors (Under 16's)

£8.00 Seniors (Over 65's)

£8.00 Young Adults

Non Season Ticket Holders

£16.00 Adults

£10.00 Juniors (Under 16's)

£10.00 Seniors (Over 65's)

£10.00 Club 16- 21 Members

...or something to that effect. Maybe I'm nit-picking and some will argue that a fiver here or three quid there makes no odds to fans, but I think it makes more difference to us fans than it would to the club. £4 will only pay for about forty seconds of a 10k a week footballers wage!

[rover6]

Really good win (although it sounds as if we caught Pompey on a bad day). However, with Gamst and Bentley on form, we are a handful for anybody - you would think.

Okay, Mokoena is getting good reviews. I congratulate him. If he continues to put in decent performances and his passing and technical levels improve, I (and a few others) will have to admit the error of our ways.

Was Samba injured or was he 'saved' for the next game? He is gonna become a legend at Rovers. He's got the size, pace and technical ability. Super signing by Hughes and Herth Berlin - you must either have a silly manager or a cartload of exceptional centre backs.

[92er]

They seemed to really target Bentley and Pedersen for lots of tough treatment and the ref didn't really seem to clamp down on it properly. he even seemed to be warning their 34 some time after he had been booked, whereas he booked Pedersen and Derbyshire without warning them. Samba also got some rough treatment-hope they're all fit for Wednesday.

[Hasta]

As for the crowd? Awful. Apart from the dismal attendance, where were the missing 8000 from Thursday?,

One of my mates had a season ticket late 80's to about 94 but started work on shifts so started picking his games. A few years ago he eventually felt the whole situation regarding entrance fee's, players wages etc.. had gone over the top and, having got married, stopped going down apart from a handful of games a season. The few games he did attend were often carling cup or fa cup games at reduced prices. He just simply refused to pay what he felt was over the top pricing.

On Thursday he said in the pub before the game that "people like him who cite ticket prices as the principal reason they don't attend had absolutely no excuse if they did not attend the crucial Leverkusen and Arsenal games at the prices whether they are on TV or not. It's no good people bleating about prices and then not coming out in force to prove their point when the club finally begins to listen.

Maybe there's 8000 more like him ready to be unleashed on Wednesday. We will see.

[RevidgeBlue]

One of my mates had a season ticket late 80's to about 94 but started work on shifts so started picking his games. A few years ago he eventually felt the whole situation regarding entrance fee's, players wages etc.. had gone over the top and, having got married, stopped going down apart from a handful of games a season. The few games he did attend were often carling cup or fa cup games at reduced prices. He just simply refused to pay what he felt was over the top pricing.

On Thursday he said in the pub before the game that "people like him who cite ticket prices as the principal reason they don't attend had absolutely no excuse if they did not attend the crucial Leverkusen and Arsenal games at the prices whether they are on TV or not. It's no good people bleating about prices and then not coming out in force to prove their point when the club finally begins to listen.

Maybe there's 8000 more like him ready to be unleashed on Wednesday. We will see.

I agree with that sentiment except that it's not especially cheap on Wednesday for non ST holders (20 quid upwards) and it's live on TV.

Anything approaching 20,000 home fans would be a very good response in the context of crowds this season imo and go some way towards proving Paul's point that many fans will only come to games that really matter.

[RoyRover]

I'm delighted with this result. It gives us a real shot at getting into Europe. I'm happy for Nonda as well, two more goals, even if they were gifts, will give the guy more confidence and takes his tally to seven which isn't bad at all. This sets us up nicely for the game on Wednesday.

[LWX]

rovers 3 pompey 0

derbs, nonda & gally (off the bench)

.......me optimistic....never!!!!

well i got the score right.......

[Guest shoppybrfc]

I'm delighted with this result. It gives us a real shot at getting into Europe. I'm happy for Nonda as well, two more goals, even if they were gifts, will give the guy more confidence and takes his tally to seven which isn't bad at all. This sets us up nicely for the game on Wednesday.

7 Goals in 22 Prem Matchs, with 16 Being Starts, is very respectable!

[USABlue]

Pompey never turned up.

I'd disagree with that Rev, just a little bit. I think we just out performed 'em in every aspect of the game today to make 'em look quite poor. They had a very good spell right after we scored but we slowly started to close them down. We gave them no room and we hustled for everything, I am sure WE took them out of the game FFS give us a bit of credit. Elsewhere I had made comment about Sheff U and their work ethic and team work I thought we did much the same but better, we added some classy moments.

Coles elbow on the Axe was disgraceful, Clatterbox waving off Matty's penalty was disgraceful and I wonder if that was not the reason he gave the one for Gamst. I thought Portsmouth were a bit cynical in some of their challenges. I am also getting tired of watching teams get away with holding and pushing. It's all a bit sickening when good healthy challenges get yellow cards but the constant wrestling holds are allowed to go.

Samba man, is he hurt (another "professional" challenge) I loved the run he went on until he was intentionally tripped cos he took the wee wee. I had the feeling he could have ran the ball all the way into the Portsmouth goal if he wanted to. He is rapidly beginning to impress me.

Nonda looked ten times the player than earlier in the season, and my man of the match Steven Warnock, he was immense. The lad has one hell of an engine that for sure and a fair bit of pace with it too.

Don't know if we can get by the Arse BUT, next season if we can keep everyone together and have some reasonable fortune with the injuries we could have one hell of a good team here.

[Presty On Tour]

tidy performance, i think hughes has got a nice few selection problems for wednesday as everyone played well today and would be gutted to be dropped.

dunn, nelsen and mCcarthy all didn't start today.