news-engine

Gaffer For A Day: Portsmouth were great until QPR decided to attack - our defence looked lost Gaffer For A Day George Hare, aged 31 from Cosham, assesses Pompey’s 3-1 defeat to QPR... What did you make of the performance? It was good for the opening 20 minutes, we looked really bright going forward. Luke Brooke-Smith was doing well, Abu Kamara looked dangerous. Then, as soon as QPR started attacking us, the defence were lost. It was a bit similar to West Ham, we just couldn’t cope and conceded three quick goals. Rocco Shein looks good on the ball, but defensively not great. Ebu Adams when we got him was an absolutely perfect signing for a relegation battle, but performances like that you can see why Derby wanted to upgrade to push up the Championship. It’s the first game, it will get better over the season. The loanees looked good, but are going to need time before they are effective. We don’t know how good Marezi’s going to be, he needs to get fit, he needs to get games. How concerned are you about the defence? We have waited so long for Conor Shaughnessy to come back from injury that we were expecting it to be okay when he got fit, but I’m concerned. With him and Regan Poole back together again, like those League One days, we are now potentially starting to see some flaws in them, even though it’s early days. If we had managed to get Luke Graham over the line, I’d have had a lot more confidence, he probably would have pushed Shaughnessy out of the side straight away. I really hope Benjy Arthur comes good. I don’t know how good he’s going to be, he’s only 20 years old. From the reviews from Brentford, he sounds very good, so hopefully he comes into the side over the next few games. How do you assess Abu Kamara’s first game back? He had some bright spells in the first 30 minutes, although when Ebou Adams put him through that time, any sort of first-time touch on it and it would have ended up in the back of the net. Only he tried to control it. Still, it’s good he got into that position, it’s not something we really had last season. It was good he was there, but he should have scored. Abu is another player who needs to get his confidence up. That’s the problem with all of our signings, there are some players looking to get fit who weren’t playing a great deal last season - and they need games. You have to be patient with him, he didn’t play a lot for Getafe. We have to be patient with the new players in Pompey’s squad. Who was your man of the match? It’s a tough one, there were no massive stand-outs. Ryan Kavuma-McQueen looked really good off the bench, but after the first minutes they were all pretty average. Still, Terry Devlin gets it, purely for the goal. I sat in the front row of the Fratton End and got a really good view of it. The second he got hold of the ball, you knew what was coming. It was the first touch, the player coming towards him went the other way, it was brilliant. I’d say better than both of the goals he scored at Charlton last season. Nicolas Schmid - 5 Terry Devlin - 6 - MOM Conor Shaughnessy - 5 Regan Poole - 5 Zak Swanson - 5 Rocco Shein - 5 Ebu Adams - 5 Abu Kamara - 6 Adrian Segecic - 6 Luke Brooke-Smith - 6 (Ryan Kavuma-McQueen - 7) Colby Bishop - 5 Your Next Pompey Read: Michael Eisner: Why we had to change our Portsmouth transfer policy this summer