Portsmouth 'Gaffer For A Day': I was mainly disappointed in Spurs' Yang Minhyeok. Or maybe I'm being overly harsh
Gaffer For A Day, James Lewis, aged 35 from Clanfield, delivers his verdict on Pompey’s 2-1 defeat to Reading in the Carabao Cup...
What did you think of that performance?
It was a poor performance all round. We didn’t dominate, there were a lot of sloppy passes, a lot of sloppy play in general, and we lacked a bit of physicality throughout the team.
We missed Regan Poole and Conor Shaughnessy at the back with their leadership and obviously Colby Bishop up front. Thomas Waddingham is going to be a good player, but, at the moment, just doesn’t have that same presence.
We were very weak in midfield, obviously it was Luke Le Roux and Mark Kosznovszky’s first games, but they looked quite off it, which I can understand.
I don’t think any individual was really bad, it was just a collectively bad team performance. We definitely deserved to lose, Reading wanted it more.
Who stood out for you?
Ben Killip made a couple of good saves, especially with the first goal, when he was very unlucky, saving it twice only to see Andre Garcia follow up to score.
His distribution was pretty good, especially out wide when he hit Zak Swanson quite a lot, while there was another good save late on against Daniel Kyerewaa.
Killip got a bit of unfair criticism at the end of last season, I’m not quite sure why really. But he came out on Tuesday night and showed he’s a decent back-up keeper, not a bad number two.
What did you make of Yang Minhyeok?
He was the player I was mainly disappointed with. The Spurs youngster has potential and wanted the ball, but, every time he got it, he seemed to check back.
Maybe I am being a bit overly harsh, but I want someone driving the ball forward, not for it to eventually end up being played back to Killip. Yet I’ve seen a couple of clips of him playing for QPR last season and he seemed very direct.
Against Reading, he was looking for the easy option rather than the difficult option. Sometimes you just have to take a chance, chances win games.
Yang wasn’t really on it and their right-back Ashqar Ahmed had a really strong game up against him.
How do you assess Pompey’s three debutants?
Le Roux got a few challenges in, which was good to see, but he seemed a bit off the pace. While Kosznovszky had a couple of nice touches, yet couldn’t really influence the game.
We looked so much better after Adrian Segecic came on for the last 20 minutes, he’s definitely my signing of the summer so far.
As for Ibane Bowat, he and Hayden Matthews just lacked the presence you get from Poole and Shaughnessy. Bowat was better than Matthews, though, who was far too weak for the second goal.
I also understand it was their first competitive action of the season, but I can't see any of the players who started on Saturday not starting against Norwich.
Ben Killip - 7
Zak Swanson - 6
Hayden Matthews - 4
Ibane Bowat - 4
Jacob Farrell - 5
Luke Le Roux - 4
Mark Kosznovszky - 4
John Swift - 5
Terry Devlin - 7
Yang Minhyeok - 5
Thomas Waddingham - 5