Portsmouth vs Bristol Rovers Matchday Thread

Last two games DC has mentioned the injuries in the squad during his post match interview.

I'd like the interviewer to ask him if given that, he feels he should've acted more positively in the transfer window.

Ultimately the manager will have to take responsibility for just about everything concerning the team - recruitment, selection, formation et al but I do have a degree of sympathy for him. 

In June he believed he had a top 6 budget with money to spend - confirmed by the Chairman. With the demise of UWE I believe that budget was drastically cut - there is/was no need then to build a team ready for the Championship where the Stadium if it had gone ahead, would have been ready for the start of the 2019/2020 season. On top of that DC then lost a lot of leverage in being able to offer potential signings the challenge of being in a promotion chasing team - what does he realistically have to offer now - the chance to play in one of the worst professional football stadiums in the country.

IMO if the stadium had gone ahead it would have been a totally different ball game, DC would have been given a mandate and allocated enough funds to build a team capable of challenging for promotion, either this season or next, ready to move in to the new stadium. Instead we are now back to a position where the club realistically will not be championship ready for arguably another five years at the earliest, hence the longer term investment in development squads and academies. All the club will be realistically interested in at the moment will be maintaining their League 1 status until they feel they are ready to make the next step - which as I've said before will be at least IMO another five years; and then only of course, if the owners are prepared to cough up the £10's of millions necessary to regenerate the Mem.

DC's hands are firmly tied I'm afraid and again IMO he will be, along with the club treading water (if he survives/or wants to) for a long time to come and we are just going to have to get used to mediocrity for a while yet.

We need someone that can take advantage of the set pieces. We had two classics this evening that the boys used to set up short " in game " passes rather than putting pressure on the goal.

They without doubt have a lower budget than us but often one team like say burton 2 years ago defy the odds and have a great season,we even threatened to do it last year.
We dont know yet if shrewsbury can sustain it and we surely know if they go up then its just a matter of time before they get relegated.
Im told the set up at shrewsbury is much better than ours but cant prove that?
Do they have tents as large uncovered areas?

With Jay Spearing now known to have been training with Blackpool, I'd like to see us make an offer to him. He might not want to move south, but if you don't ask, you don't get. With his experience, style of play, leadership ability and quality, he is exactly the type of player that we are missing in the middle of the park.

One major thing that is different this season is the formation. DC has pretty much tried to play 4-3-3 in every game this season. The last couple of seasons he mixed it up well using 4-4-2, 5-3-2 and 4-3-3.

If we had been in a similar situation last season leaking goals then DC would have used 5-3-2 and for most of our away games v Wigan, Bradford etc. We have no wingers so cannot really use 4-4-2 right now, but 5-3-2 lets us play wing backs which at least we have people who can play there. It gives us an extra defender to try to cut out some of the mistakes and two strikers actually up front and not pushed out wide. The only problem right now (the same with playing 4-3-3) is that we only have three fit central midfielders meaning they are having to play every minute of every game.

Really think you blame the tents too much surely they do not affect our away form?