[Archived] Blackburn Rovers 1 Vs 0 Portsmouth

[1864roverite]

It was nice to have someone in the dug out who seemed to care about his decision making, cared about the team formation and cared about the result.

Not to mention the appreciation of the supporters.

[stuwilky]

What a load of rubbish, and I'm not saying that just because I'm a norwegian! The guy is 22years old, he has just moved to a new country, has been away with the national team to Italy and Norway, have only had a good couple of training sessions with the team, have played 3 games -- and you are slagging him off?! What a joke!

I'm not saying he will be a success here at Blackburn Rovers, but I'm surely not going to base my judgment on 3 games in the Premier League!

HE's 23 . But the rest of your post is bob on!

And on young mr jansen, yes he scored a well taken goal, lets not get our hopes up too soon. I seem to remember a flash of brilliance this time last season against Liverpool (so not his first goal since May 2002 Radio Lancs) .

Hopefully, but lets just not get overexcitied.

[greggyk]

It was nice to have someone in the dug out who seemed to care about his decision making, cared about the team formation and cared about the result.

Not to mention the appreciation of the supporters.

so when souness ran the whole lengh of the touchline to celebrate with his players when we equalised against Bolton and when he ran to the supporters when we equalised against charlton last season, shows he doesnt care about the fans an the players does it?

[kingalan]

What on earth did Graeme Souness see in GMP or Pedersen - this lad is not premiership material at all he cant dribble, pass, defend, has a poor first touch and hides from a challenge more importantly and has no pace to get passed his man - in fact he would struggle to get in the Burnley first team hes that poor.

Its not about gibving him time your either good enough or your not and  Pedersen offeres nothing to the Blackburn Rovers first team at all.

Souness must have been taking backhanders from the agent to sign Pedersen hes such a shocker, and now we must look for our third left sided midfielder in six months.

What a load of rubbish, and I'm not saying that just because I'm a norwegian! The guy is 22years old, he has just moved to a new country, has been away with the national team to Italy and Norway, have only had a good couple of training sessions with the team, have played 3 games -- and you are slagging him off?! What a joke!

I'm not saying he will be a success here at Blackburn Rovers, but I'm surely not going to base my judgment on 3 games in the Premier League!

I agree, I think a few folk should tone it down with their criticisms of Pedersen. To say that he's close to being one of Souness' worst signings after just three games is a bit over-the-top to say the least. He's 22, come to a foreign country, has to adapt to a different style of football which is a huge step up from what he's used to, and has only just finished his third game for Rovers for goodness sake. Plus he's moved away from his friends and family and all of the Norwegian home-comforts that I'm sure he misses. Moving abroad and starting afresh is harder than some people think. Give him a bit of time. Do you think all those scouts would've been checking him out over the summer if he was pants?

Look at how long it took Ferguson to settle in, and he was experienced at Champion's League and International football. There are countless other players who took time to settle to the British game and have turned out to be wonderful players: Henry, Bergkamp, Larsson, even our own Henning Berg had a few shockers when he first came here and look how he turned out. No wonder our players lose confidence with some wonderfully patient (!) fans like this...

[1864roverite]

Greggy

When Sourness ran down the touchline at winkers stadium it was out of relief rather than caring for his players and in particular the supporters.

Maybe sometimes his attitudes was misdirected

[RovertheHill]

Fantastic day. Nearly shed a tear when Matty scored.

I like Amo, he brings the ball out well and gives us good options at corners. However, he has the positional sense of an 8 year old which means he is constantly having to make flying, heroic-looking blocks and challenges. I'm not sure my heart will take that all season!

MGP did look a bit short on confidence and the pace of the game seemed to pass him by some times. It's early days and Hughesy should inject some confidence, but he probably does need a run in the reserves and cup games to get up to speed.

I thought second half Brett was great. Again, he's short on confidence - which is unsurprising given the stick he gets from idiots in the stands who have never played and will never understand football - but he gets through a massive amount of work tracking back, and he has genuine pace. Yes he needs to improve his final ball, but just having him in the team subdues the opposition left side.

Very impressed with Bothroyd - someone I'd not really heard of. He looks every inch a premiership player to me - very good start.

Final word for Matty. Some of us never stopped believing! A great foundation to build on.

[Blackpool_Rover]

Great Day!!!

Not got much else to add to whats been said already.

Dickov is a revelation!

The attacking options now are interesting for the cup game. Id give dickov a rest.

Pedersen definately needs a run in the reserves, de pedro also needs a few games.

[colin]

Well that was a game of two halves wasn't it? The first was pretty dull but the second was really lively.

Without spouting some amateur cod-psychology I thought the players looked better and more hard working that over the past few months.

Two that caught my eye were Matteo, who was pretty solid in central defence and nearly scored with a good shot from a corner fairly late on.

Q: has he ever played central defence for us before?

I've got to say, that I thought Bert Emmerton was pretty good in the second half. He ran at defenders and put the fear of god into them.

Anyhoo, three points, Matt's back with a goal and we're all happy.

Which is nice.

[1864roverite]

well they have two opportunities before Charlton away

the reserve game at Blackpool and the cup game.

I would rest both Dickov and Stead, Fergie, Matteo, Niell, Gray and Emerton.

Bring in the likes of Nissa, Gallacher,Donnelly,Bruce,Corvoni and Peter and ensure that in the Lancs cup the likes of Barker and Garner (JHC The Memories) get a decent run out

[vyeo]

rejected all kinds of media access to today's results till half an hour after the match ended, so that i could watch the delayed telecast ala 'live' telecast, and boy am i so so glad that i did this!

thought we started really well, but seemed to lose our way towards the end of the first half. in all honesty, portsmouth should have scored, but we got our slice of luck today.

in the second, we almost camped in their half. again, they missed a glit-edged chance, so good luck for us again.

matty's strike was superb - receiving the ball with his back to goal, the close control, then digging the ball out from under his foot to make the angle for the shot, and then finally drilling it into the corner was all too much for me. let out a huge scream and had tears in my eyes! that was like the matty of old. but yes, gotta come back to reality, as matty did well but also made his fair share of 'mistakes'. ie: just after coming on, i thought he was trying to do too much by himself, holding onto the ball for too long, as well as trying to pass his way out in our box when a hoof upfield would suffice. but he did improve, and after the goal, looked totally comfortable. hope he builds on this and improves. then again, i thought the same after his wonder goal against liverpool last year... so come'on matty, don't let it happen again.

bothroyd: big, strong, and actually skillful and pacy too! looked good, asserted himself, and looks very confident. good home debut. hope for more from him.

emerton: had a good game. actually took people on and got past them. passing was okie, and made himself available for the ball well. chased and harried well too, but crossing still needs working.

our defence: is it me or did it really look more 'solid' than usual? short clearly had trouble dealing with yakubu's pace but used his positional sense and strength well. matteo still looks suspect, but was fairly solid today, certainly much better than his performances all season. according to the commentator, today's clean sheet was also his first of 2004, including his leeds days. amoruso, today he was supreme. thought he won everything expected of him, and he looks like our only defender capable of picking someone out with a long ball. also our best outlet of hoofing the ball 60 yards upfield when required. freekick was good too. agree with the earlier comment that despite all his defensive frailities, he does add something different to the team.

the referee: he looked a decent bloke to me. called everything pretty much correctly, although brad's barge on fuller looked like a penalty to me. am i the only one thinking that if it was souness' team, that would have been a dead-cert pen?

hughes: although he started last week's team, they looked more assured than last week at st james. inspired substitution of matty - don't think its due to injury, as commentator had already mentioned matty being warmed up prior to the horror tackle on pedersen.

pedersen: abysmal. he looked really really lost... i'm not writing him off as yet, hope he comes good, but he really needs to knuckle down. hope this is just due to him settling in, but he gave away almost everything he could today. mishit crosses, mishit passes. but his long throws look a useful weapon.

all in all, very very satisfied, and a smile still on my face. i was totally convinced we'd be murdered tioday if souness was still in charge. but its turned out to be a wonderful start for a new era, so come'on hughes' blue and white army! up the table we go!

[Modi]

A few random thoughts...

Anyone else see Sparky bellowing at Short around 20mins in? Short turned round obviously thinking wtf? And Hughes applauds him for an excellent tackle a few seconds earlier. That's man management.

Matt Jansen saluting the Blackburn End. He loves the club, realises the club loves him. He might never be the same Matty, but his heart is here.

Still worried about the defence.

[tsnuf]

Just got done watching the Rovers match (same-day delay was best I could get.. its 3 am now). This is the best Saturday night I've had in a while!

The first half was pretty disappointing, especially the last 20 minutes, but once we got going in the second half I was much happier.

I'm not seeing why people were impressed with Flitcroft so much, he didn't do anything wrong but he wasn't very impressive to me... However I must agree, Pedersen gave the ball away too easily.. I say we let him play some reserve matches or come on as a sub, there are better players for his starting position for now. Jansen was alright, thought he had botched his goal when it was under his feet, but he got it out and scored.. should improve with more games. Stead was unlucky, looks frustrated. Dickov did well, as did Ferguson, and all the defenders. I was enjoying watching our Australian duo team up down the right hand side and they both had a run down the middle too.. Bothroyd had some refreshing tricky ball control, but all 3 of his shots were closer to the moon than the goal.. impressive debut though.

I believe we'll get better, just relieved to get the 3 points for now.

That being said though, Fuller should've had a penalty Maybe Lady Luck just didn't like Souey?

[Blue and White]

Great result, however it was not a good game.

In the first half we were pretty bad. Poor passing, mistakes, we created very little upfront against an even worse Portsmouth side. The 2nd half was a bit better, and after we scored the goal we finally started playing good football, and could have had another goal or two after that. Although we really got lucky (!) that the ref didn't give a penalty for Pompey at the end, he could have easily done that.

Amoruso was great I thought. Ferguson was good too. Dickov and Stead as usual tried very hard, Bothroyd did well and I was beyond happy when Jansen got the goal. It was a very good strike, and hopefully this will give him confidence.

It's fantastic that Hughes is starting out with the 3 points for us, however we must improve.

[rover6]

'New manager syndrome' - don't you just love it?

Right, Hughes out and Sturrock in. New man for the Charlton game and another 3 points. I think John Williams has found the formula to success.

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

put it into perspective

there were only just over 1050 from pompy !

Even worse Roverite..ONLY 19,000 Rovers fans to welcome the new manager then...shyte.

[Timmy]

1st half was rubbish, much better 2nd half, derserved the win

looks like hughes is trying to make us harder to beat, putting flitcroft in midfield rather than tugay

[Radagast]

When Sourness ran down the touchline at winkers stadium it was out of relief rather than caring for his players and in particular the supporters.

You're psychic are you?

[greggyk]

I really dont think playing flitty instead of Tugay makes us harder to beat.It actually makes it easier. Tugay has been one of the better players so far this season along with Dickov and Emerton. I know we won today, but im sure we still would have won(and maybe played better) with tugay in the team. Flitty adds nothing to our team

Edited September 18, 2004 by greggyk

[1864roverite]

neither psychic or psychotic Rad

I have the club in my veins and I know exactly what it means to be part of Blackburn Rovers FC as many on here are alike. I can tell you without even thinking about it as can most of board members.

in fact I will add the fact that he probably got a point bonus in his wage packet at the same time !

Heart and consideration is the way Matt Jansen applauded the crowd, love and adoration is the way tugay salutes the fans at the end of every game, feeling for the club is the togetherness of the players and the management.

Now that final one is something we have not had at Ewood since winning promotion back to the PL or the Worthy Cup Final.

[SIMON GARNERS 194]

I must admit that after an awful first half I turned to my mate and said Hughes has really got his hands full turning this (Souness made) mish-mash of a side around...I still think that.

Our team offered little in the first 45 to be honest and didn't look like being able to raise their game even in front of their new manager.Thank god the second half was much improved but why are we seemingly unable to perform as a team in the first half of a game....its happened so many times its unbelievable!!

Edited September 18, 2004 by SIMON GARNERS 194

[Alan75]

Like a script from Roy of the Rovers,

Old player returns as New Manager

Team struggle to find form in the first half

Fans favourite whose career was threatened comes off the bench and get the winning goal.

Fantasty stuff comes to life,

[1864roverite]

well look at it this way

last season we lost this match 2-1

If sourness had remained in charge we would undoubtedly lost today

Hughes has instilled already a unity amongst the players - this is evidenced in the way they fought for every 50-50 challenge, the way they stood together at the end and the way they came off the pitch together.

This was never there in the last 12 months of the sourness era.

I think its a massive step and now we have a week where the club can rest players, work them as a unit, let the kids and peripheral players take the field in the cup matches in reaienss for a tough outing at charlton.

[Kennysuperbuyer]

I have a sense of well-being !! Lovely !

[rover6]

If sourness had remained in charge we would undoubtedly lost today.

Don't know about that because there was no Dwight Yorke on the bench to bring on, and in doing so, disrupt the formation and no Lua Lua to take advantage of the tactical blunder.

Isn't amazing how a man can be revered and then detested in a matter of days? All he did was take the Newcastle job ffs. (And destroy the players' confidences and team morale).

[Philly Rover ®]

A cup game midweek, could we see Jay and Matty up front. Or should we go with Stead in the hope he can get a goal to lift his confidence. Its a nice dillema to face.

and what about gally?

A very nice dilemna to face indeed.

Great win for Rovers... and from what I've heard of Sparky's actions on the touchline, he seems so far to have what it takes to succeed at the Premiership level. I don't need to say anything more about Matty, as it's already been said.

The thing that I love as the club goes forward is that there are finally some options at a couple of key positions. Short is hurt, so either Amo or Nissa can fill in for him. If MGP really was that ineffective, Hughes can draft in de Pedro to take his spot. Stead could even be dropped, but should we start with Jansen or Bothroyd in his place? Or even drop Dickov and give Gally another shot? Maybe the quality isn't quite there yet, but the depth finally is, and Hughes should have some options going forward.

Onward and upward Rovers!