Away Match Day Thread 06/04/2026 - MDT: Portsmouth v Oxford United

[SteMerritt]

 

[greatunclekip]

Because he's an absolute_____________?

Realist?

 

[38yearsofpain]

On another thing, looks like it will be Lincoln replacing us.

What an absolutely fantastic story for them, shows that you don’t need to spend a fortune and that good tactics, fitness and tactical nous go a long way. Let that be a lesson to us next season after the money we have pissed away.

Skubala was always my choice when we went to Des ball. Be interesting to see if anybody bigger takes a risk on him before Lincoln become the Championship underdogs.

 

[Billyox]

Except for the fact we now have two less games to get points from, and have just dropped two points in what was a very important 6 pointer against a relegation rival.

Today's game was THE game of the remaining fixtures where we had the opportunity to leapfrog a relegation rival, and we bottled it.

And 4 out of 5 of the remaining fixtures are gonna be seriously tough, against promotion/playoff chasing sides.

But yes, other than that, nothing's changed

Great bring it on
Same as last year then against Sheffield United and Sunderland remind me how did we get on again

Embrace it
i expect had i said to you or anyone back in August we will be 1 point from safety with 5 to go you would of taken it

 

[ThatSlopesATwelfthMan]

That was the best Pompey have played for weeks. Annoyingly. Even with 10 men they kept their shape well and pressed hard in the middle. Bad timing for us that Anderson and Dozzell both back in the team today. Apart from Mills we looked weary. Even superstan was flagging badly by the time they equalised though. It really doesn't help seeing out games with the now almost completely immobile Will Vaulks either, he makes everyone around him less effective. Gutting to let it slip but loads to play for. A few of those around us have games against each other still to come and something tells me Blackburn are still vulnerable.

 

[Jon-ioualways]

Realist?

Given that pessimists always claim that they're realist, maybe that word fits. Maybe there are others that fit better. But as I don't want to be rude, I'll leave that for others.

I am rather sorry, though, that I broke my promise to ignore you completely.

 

[werthersoriginal]

Gary Rowett, what are you like? Maybe the experienced championship man will take two teams down. (I’m away, were we s**t? No one else won at least.)

 

[Byrne Baby Byrne]

The Brown pen, the Harris miss and the failure to see it out today against ten men…
That’s six points missed recently, that were in our hands.
If we go down , it will be of our own making

 

[38yearsofpain]

Pompey fan here. That was a tough watch. What's the view on the red from you guys? A lot of our fans and the commentators claiming it was harsh. I'm 50/50.

I notice a few people saying we're guaranteed for the drop as we have a difficult run of games but truth be told I actually think we tend to perform better against teams closer to the top of the table. We also have a few players due to come back from injury so who knows. Views from the opposition fans tend to flip flop between "worst performance I've ever seen" and "no way will Pompey go down if they play like that for the rest of the season" on a near game by game basis so all bets are off as far as I'm concerned.

See Leicester are losing. Hopefully we can both stay up but it's getting tight.

It was one of those easy to give a yellow but it was reckless so understand why it was red. No doubt it changed the game obviously.
As for staying up it now really should becomes any 2 from 3 very poor sides. But the other 2 poor sides Blackburn and WBA could easily lose the last five. We have thrown 3 leads away recently but we are hard to beat. But assuming it will be 2 from 3 having watched all 3 sides, it will be whoever can show some quality and concistency in those final five games or more likely who is the least inconcistent will stay up.

 

[Mad Dog]

Great bring it on
Same as last year then against Sheffield United and Sunderland remind me how did we get on again

Embrace it
i expect had i said to you or anyone back in August we will be 1 point from safety with 5 to go you would of taken it

Sunderland had absolutely nothing to play for against us, as they were completely secure in their playoff spot (3rd or 4th, I can't remember) but no amount of points in their remaining games was gonna move them from that spot, so they played a 2nd string side against us, and were clearly just going through the motions, as they had much bigger fish to fry.

We did do well to beat Sheffield United though, and we can only hope we pull another rabbit or two out the hat in these remaining fixtures, but I can't see it if I'm honest.

And no, at the start of the season, I absolutely would not have taken us being one point from safety with 5 games to go, I expected us to kick on this season, and aim for a just below mid table finish, I didn't expect us to go backwards like we have.

 

[Isle of Wight Yellow]

It seemed an odd decision to start Roosken and then not even have him on the bench next game - which meant we had to have Placheta as a sort of hybrid left back, which completely negated him.

The obvious sub to me was take off Donley, who was completely and utterly spent, for Makosso, and move Brown to left back. That might have shored up our defence, wasted some time, and maybe we wouldn’t have conceded that final goal, who knows.

I like Bloomfield but he does seem to make some random/panicky decisions sometimes. Certain players are in one week, completely out the next (Roosken, Ter Avest) some are seemingly undroppable no matter what, and some are frozen out.

 

[tonyw]

Utter shite!
More genius decision making from Bloomfield has cost us again!

MPH is crap, contributes nothing, and looks totally unbothered about our fate, yet Bloomfield starts him again!

Then they go down to ten men, so you'd think we'd put on a striker and go two up top, with Placheta on the wing, and stretch them a bit.
Instead, he puts on a half fit defender and a defensive midfielder, who we know nullifies Brannagan when they play together.

And then when he does finally put Placheta on, he puts him at f*****g LWB!!

Then he brings on bloody Harris, who is absolutely useless, and leaves other attacking options, like Prelec and Jin Woo on the bench, even though we still had one substitution available, but he didn't bother to use it! What a moron!

Bloomfield's decision making is costing us points, and taking us down I'm afraid, and I don't think I want him with us in league one next season, we need a manager with a brain in his head.

Running out of games now, and with the exception of Sheff Wed, all the remaining opponents are a hell of a lot better than us, and will have something to play for, so I can't see any points coming from those games.

Four points dropped this weekend, thanks to Bloomfield's decision making, and with today being a particularly important 6 pointer, I'm livid with the way he set us up, and didn't even use the substitutions correctly or even use all of the 5 possible subs available to take advantage of the extra man.

Pathetic!

I agree about the subs being weird......don't agree that Bloomfield was at fault in his initial team selection, though.

The big problem we have is that whilst our first XI is now (finally) good enough to compete at Championship level, our squad is not, at least in midfield and in the forward positions. I understand your frustration at times with MPH, but the guy does have the skill set to compete at this level. Mills has shown himself to be a good Championship winger at times (he's a winger so he's not on every singled week!), Donley has the quality and Lanks is a solid Championship striker. Everyone else that we might play in a forward position is a big step down from those four.

It's a symptom of our recruitment team having a good January window, but getting far more wrong than right in the previous three.

I genuinely don't think that Bloomfield has a choice but to roll the same team out there for the next five games, injuries permitting, and hope that they play some stormers. Some of them are looking a little fatigued, which is a worry, but based on what we've seen, does anyone really want to pin our survival hopes on any of Placheta, Dembele, Romeny, Harris, Prelec, Emakhu or Jeon at this point in time?!?

 

[m]

(I’m away, were we s**t? No one else won at least.)

Same old, really.

Not quite good enough, but not bad enough to be terrible.

 

[WRox]

Bitterly disappointed not to win that and suspect an inability to see today and the Charlton games out sees us down.

Equally, it’s far from over and Leicester dropping two points at Hillsborough is huge for us. I watched the game and it was not a reflection of an unlikely resurgence from Sheffield Wednesday either - we should still be fully expecting to beat them at home.

1 point behind Pompey and next they’ve got Boro away, Ipswich, Leicester and Coventry away. They might have injured players returning, but they’re 8 games without a win heading into those.

Level with Leicester who have all the quality in the division that could of course click, but all the negativity to match. 1 win in 15.

It has to be three points on Saturday, but if we do beat Watford, we’ll give ourselves every chance of staying up.

 

[m]

which meant we had to have Placheta as a sort of hybrid left back, which completely negated him.

I mean, to be fair, you can't entirely rule out the possibility of Placheta having completely negated himself. He tends to do that about 80% of the time, after all.

 

[Isle of Wight Yellow]

does anyone really want to pin our survival hopes on any of Placheta, Dembele, Romeny, Harris, Prelec, Emakhu or Jeon at this point in time?!?

Let’s say a fresh Romeny plays the last 10-15 minutes instead of a completely knackered Donley. Do you seriously think he does any worse? Given that Donley was either nowhere near the ball, or gave it away (although a lucky break from him doing that did lead to our goal) then I can’t see how…

 

[Carpy]

Those defending MPH, just look at the other wing, we have Mills who consistently gets past his man down the outside and delivers a dangerous cross into the box, and when he’s not doing that, he’s cutting inside and having a go on his left.

I would drop MPH and play anyone else, Placheta, Woo, even Harris, anyone willing to put a shift in.

No pile on here, he isn’t the reason we couldn’t convert our lead into a win, but he’s been poor for a while now. His long throws are also abysmal.

 

[Coffin Dodger]

Might have been a harsh red, but it makes up for the numerous times that Ogilvey has got away with it in the past, he's a dirty player at the best of times.

 

[holdsteady]

Given all the hype about this weekend, a lot of it from me, it turned out to have made very little difference.

Still that can’t keep happening, the games are running out and we need a win after 4 without.

That’s 3 games in a row we have conceded an early goal now though, we need to cut that out, we don’t come from behind to win so it’s killing us.

 

[Billyox]

The Brown pen, the Harris miss and the failure to see it out today against ten men…
That’s six points missed recently, that were in our hands.
If we go down , it will be of our own making

And the 3 points they gained seeing it out against Blackburn and 1 point gain by seeing it out with 10 men vs Coventry and the point gained seeing it out away at boro
Thats 5 points back of those 6

 

[greatunclekip]

Sunderland had absolutely nothing to play for against us, as they were completely secure in their playoff spot (3rd or 4th, I can't remember) but no amount of points in their remaining games was gonna move them from that spot, so they played a2nd string side against us, and were clearly just going through the motions, as they had much bigger fish to fry.

We did do well to beat Sheffield United thou, and we can only hope we pull another rabbit or two out the hat in these remaining fixtures, but I can't see it if I'm honest.

An no, at the start of the season, I absolutely would not have taken us being one point from safety with 5 games to go, I expected us to kick on this season, and aim for a just below mid table finish, I didn't expect us to go backwards like we have.

Thank goodness for a voice of reason. The leeway this club gets from our fans is incredible.

This season has been abysmal decision after abysmal decision, but you just know when relegation is confirmed it will be polite clapping.

Today was a must win against a team in shocking form and with several key players missing. We fucked it. Yet now we are winning 3 home games.

 

[uptheus]

Poor system 2nd half, felt we should have stayed with the 4, and poor substitutions and timing of them.

And why not bring on Prelec, and how MPH and Donley stayed on as long as they did is beyond me.

Placheta needed to offer the same as Mills was, but on the left, so for him to have to play virtually a left back role because of the system was so poor.

After they went down to 10 men so early on they were there for the taking, so after going ahead 2-1, to end up drawing that feels like a loss, but definitely 2 points dropped.

 

[38yearsofpain]

Gary Rowett, what are you like? Maybe the experienced championship man will take two teams down. (I’m away, were we s**t? No one else won at least.)

I was saying that he will either keep us up twice by relegating Liecester or take both us and Leicester down in one season.
Still a long long way to go in this dogfight though.

 

[Billyox]

W

Thank goodness for a voice of reason. The leeway this club gets from our fans is incredible.

This season has been abysmal decision after abysmal decision, but you just know when relegation is confirmed it will be polite clapping.

Today was a must win against a team in shocking form and with several key players missing. We fucked it. Yet now we are winning 3 home games.

Seeing as you have given up can I have your ticket i can give it to someone who actually wants to support the team no matter what the situation maybe

 

[Boris]

No pile on here, he isn’t the reason we lost

Er, we didn't lose

 

[greatunclekip]

W

Seeing as you have given up can I have your ticket i can give it to someone who actually wants to support the team no matter what the situation maybe

I will support the team for every second on a game day. It doesn’t mean I swallow every abysmal decision we make.

And I gave up in September. The apathy around the club was clear, and the fans are now replicating that too.

 

[Essexyellows]

Been in worse situations.

Go a goal down , get back to a draw, take the lead..........................against 10 men then refer to Larry.



It is still interesting, it is still all to play for........... who the f**k wants mid table mediocrity?

 

[Carpy]

Er, we didn't lose

Feels like it to me

 

[Billyox]

I will support the team for every second on a game day. It doesn’t mean I swallow every abysmal decision we make.

But your negative about everything not just the bad decisions
Today has gone you move on Saturday is a different day

 

[tonyw]

Let’s say a fresh Romeny plays the last 10-15 minutes instead of a completely knackered Donley. Do you seriously think he does any worse? Given that Donley was either nowhere near the ball, or gave it away (although a lucky break from him doing that did lead to our goal) then I can’t see how…

I'm not saying that we can't substitute any of our four forwards when they're knackered - of course, we're going to have to over the next five games.

I'm just saying a) that Bloomfield doesn't have any choice, really, about which four forwards he starts with because we only have four of Championship quality, and b) the fact that we can't rely on any of our forwards to make any impact whatsoever off the bench also means that we're at a huge disadvantage compared to most of our peers.

 

[PottersRightBoot]

Vaulks and HTA made a big positive difference - well done Bloomfield on the changes.

Pompey generally ale house. Don’t have much craft but thought their equalizer was well worked.

Mills and Bran again excellent.

We should have seen it out . This failure to turn 1 into 3 may cost us.

Again eventful, again a pleasure to attend, again a ripping atmosphere.. We’ve got to stay in the Champ. Somehow.

Still well in it and don’t get the snide stuff.