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Reply | Saito/West Brom
at 14:04 27 Dec 2025
He's 31, and he's played about 300 professional games! There's something wrong with his engineering. We need to upgrade him urgently. |
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Thread | Saito/West Brom
at 19:56 26 Dec 2025
I like Koki a lot, but that was a really piss-poor showing from him today. For my money, JS should drop him for the West Brom game for Smyth, who you always know what you'll get from.
At half-time, I'd have had Dembele off like a shot, but he did get his finger out to good effect in the 2nd half, and showed some real flashes of heart and quality. Meanwhile, Varane continues to under-deliver - he's like Mikele Leigertwood on Temazepam most of the time!
I'd consider changing it up against WBA and bringing in two or more of Hayden, Field, Poku, and Morgan, but I think we'll be lucky (again) to get a point up there. Maybe JS will do something different this time and get us playing for the first half and phoning it in for the second. [Post edited 27 Dec 1:08]
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Thread | Dunne on Pompey
at 19:39 26 Dec 2025
https://www.qpr.co.uk/videos/0
I like Dunne, and at least he's honest about the crap first half - not that the interviewer had the guts to ask on fans' behalf why it keeps happening, obviously - but not sure what he's on when he talks about it being hard to come to Portsmouth and get a point. They'd lost half their home games before today and are 18th out of 24th in the home league table.
Have a word with yourself, Jimmy, and don't insult our intelligence! [Post edited 26 Dec 20:01]
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 19:28 26 Dec 2025
Why does that conclusion follow from those premises?
Why not feel fed up/angry/disappointed (again)?
Perhaps Nourry and Stephane can explain why the fans who attended shouldn't have half their money refunded as his team could only manage to play half a game (again)?
Our away showings are really becoming shameful. |
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 19:25 26 Dec 2025
It's not as if they're supposed to be professionals or anything, is it?  |
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 16:00 26 Dec 2025
Let's hope his supposed studiousness gives him sufficient insight to change it in the 2nd half. If he doesn't, he's clearly phoning it in too. That, or he's just stupid. |
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Reply | Pompey match thread
at 15:56 26 Dec 2025
It actually stemmed from a crass giveaway by Mbengue, who's having an uneven game to put it kindly. Sadly, the game has gone as I thought and predicted. We can turn it on when we want at home, then this mostly half-arsed slop.
At 30m, they'd completed 220 odd passes to our 40.
Can't string a single decent move together.
Not a single shot.
Portsmouth are 4th bottom, whatever the manager wants to say.
Some of our players need to grow up.
I would hook Saito and Dembele at h/t - they're both phoning it in.
We should expect better in the 2nd half, but will we get it? |
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Reply | Gaffer on Portsmouth, Christmas and beyond
at 13:19 25 Dec 2025
What are the specific groundbreaking takeouts you think I might be excited by here, Clive? (Not trying to be clever - I'm just a bit perplexed.)
We need to be on it every game.
Set pieces matter.
We need to be consistent.
The past is the past.
I mean, it's not exactly forensic levels of footballing analysis, is it?
I also don't understand why he thinks Portsmouth (or 'Porpoise', amusingly) have made improvements since the start of the season. We've won five of our last seven, and they've lost five of theirs! We should be going down there with all guns blazing for three points.
Look, JS seems like a smiley type of guy you could have a congenial glass of French wine with - but I just don't find him very interesting or someone who even tells it as it is.
On verra, I guess! |
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Reply | Merry Christmas my R’s – Preview
at 12:47 25 Dec 2025
It's hardly persuasive that anyone loves everyone, on LfW or anywhere else, but Happy Xmas to both my private supporters and (neurotypical) public detractors regardless.
Re all things JS and QPR, we've had two or three heart-warming performances/results at home, but the next 6 games (I'm including our FA Cup game and the away trip to Stoke) will tell us much more. Of the league fixtures, reading things with my half-century-old grizzled head as much as my heart, I think it'll be 2W, 1D, 2L - in other words, par for the course for our season so far. (Perhaps we should run a LfW sweepstake - if legal?) Obviously, I hope we raise the bar and make me eat my (Loft for) words.
I think Julien is doing an OK job (sometimes better than OK, sometimes worse) with the enhanced squad he has, and hopefully he and the players are improving. I don't find him particularly 'studious', for the record. Studious is, for example, making sure our full-back is detailed to show Middlesbrough's Whittaker outside so he doesn't get a strike away, or at least picking up on it afterwards. Studious is realising Nardi needs to learn to catch a ball and communicate more decisively with his defenders, and doing something tangible about it. Studious is making it clear, both implicitly in games and explicitly after games, the specific thinking behind making or not making subs in a way that dispels our more than occasional perplexity this season about his lack of reactivity and/or idiosyncratic choices. Studious, in short, is a professional coach giving me - a burning amateur who watches closely and loves to learn - illuminating insights into our strategy and showings, as the best of LfW posters from time to time manage to do. As I've pointed out, and even by 'managerspeak' standards, Julien likes to talk about games and other teams in anaesthetising broad-brush generalities which tell one nothing about the team and/or opposition - in a way that that makes me worry he's much more a 'bigger picture' kind of guy (or, in other words, one who tends not to see the trees for the wood).
I think the Leicester game was probably (and to me somehow sadly) in some part the players socking it to Marti, so, for different reasons, and much as I enjoyed it, I'm taking it out of the recent picture for the opposite reasons that Clive implicitly sidelines the Boro game in his own piece. That might strike some as unwarranted, given the quality/resilience we showed against Hull and Brum, but time will tell. As we'll all agree, however, good teams show steel and panache on the road too - that's what makes them good teams, as distinct from those (like us, historically) that turn it on when we feel like it then phone it in when we've had to get on a coach for a bit, we're too far North, or it's Boxing Day.
So ram my equivocations down my throat, Rs, and let's take this seriously counter-cultural! Give me 10 points from here to Stoke, go to the Hammers with a credible team and win (or at least put up a proper fight), and then we'll talk again!
Standards, you darling bastards, standards! [Post edited 25 Dec 13:01]
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Reply | Poku
at 15:55 24 Dec 2025
Apples and pears. |
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Reply | Poku
at 15:54 24 Dec 2025
Really unjust imo. Smyth (unlike Poku and, still, Dembele) has really proven his worth, and we should definitely be renewing him on respectful terms. |
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Reply | Chair
at 14:51 23 Dec 2025
So you basically don't (or don't yet) rate any of our midfield/wingers (apart from the absentee Chair) - even though we're on the cusp of the playoffs, and Dembele, Smyth and Siato have all been scoring and making goals for fun of late. Glad you're not in our dressing room right now. |
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Reply | Chair
at 14:48 23 Dec 2025
If you're right about Bennie, he needs to start turning the myth into something real. He's still young (20 next birthday), but has been with us for 18 months (12 apps no goals), and either he's up to the Champ or he's not. Morgan is a very similar age, but already has 40 apps and a couple of goals under his belt. Let's hope he can. |
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Reply | Chair
at 13:23 23 Dec 2025
I like Chair, but I'm not sure I'd go quite that overboard. And why you would want to dislodge Burrell on current form is anyone's guess! |
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Reply | Chair
at 22:16 22 Dec 2025
These arm-Chair critics Wheel out the same Easy objections concerning Ili's limitations, when it's quite clear his Electric spirit, High workrate, and indisposition to hit the Deck get the whole ground Rocking.
I'll get my overgarments. |
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Reply | portsmouth on boxing day SOLD OUT
at 14:10 22 Dec 2025
Away day after a good win vs relegation battlers, Boxing Day, and a sold-out away allocation. We've been here before, haven't we people? To coin a phrase, what could possibly go wrong?
Pompey 2
Rs 0
Don't mind me (and don't shoot the messenger)! |
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