Oteh did nothing starting at Coventry so been in storage since. Him and Cook dosen’t move enough as a front two from what I saw so little chance he’ll be starting on Saturday.
CBT seemed to be getting rave reviews on the phone in afterwards so every chance he’ll be thrown in as a wildcard selection I suspect.
Completely agree about Devlin . Looks a really decent right back at the moment , strong , decisive and quick .
Seen the goals now. All silly mistakes. Let MOC dish out some ass-kickings at training and move on. Brain-farts aside, we’ve held our own against a team in the playoffs so management can’t let heads drop. Keep building. Stamp out those errors. We’ll be just fine.
UTS
LD
What a frustrating night. Can’t help thinking that there was a draw there for the taking and we blew it. Pompey probably know it’s the play offs for them already and we started with a fair amount of confidence.
But whilst we recovered from Cook’s idiotic moment against Bradford , we couldn’t do it again after Ferrier’s last night. Absolutely needless and moronic.
Other noticeable things last night …
Scarr is literally abysmal in possession - its either a lump forward to no mans land / attempt a pass and put in into touch or just play safe and hit a 30 yard back pass to Roberts. Surely Fitzwater is a better option?? Guthrie might not be Baresi but it’s not fair to put them in the same bracket ; Guthrie is much more comfortable with the ball.
Dobson’s energy.
Devlin was excellent as has been commented on. I never rated him, but he really looks the part now, would be happy to see him re-sign.
Ferrier was poor - if Jarvis isn’t fit on Sat , I guess Gordon will go wide instead of Ferrier to accommodate Cook (if we play the same formation)
Think we need to give regular 20/30 minute cameos to Blackett Taylor and Oteh
Midfield of Dobson, Kinsella and Edwards seems the best combination we’ve got.
It was cold , really really cold.
It’s evident for all to see that performances have started to pick up, however I think the fixture list will still see us in deep trouble.
It could be a nervous last few weeks of the season.
I don’t think the performance was as good as some are saying. Portsmouth weren’t creating too much apart from the ones we gifted from our own silly mistakes, but they were still carving us open and without us creating much ourselves.
Must admit I thought it was never a penalty at the time but it definitely was watching it back.
Very odd game, Pompey never really got out of second gear (similar to when we played them at Fratton Park). The goals they scored, were awful.
Key things for me -
Ferrier was very poor until Blackett-Taylor came on then seemed to play in a much freer role which suited him. Shout out to Blackett-Taylor too who was terrifying!!
Roberts kicking wasn’t great, equally felt like he was going against the “plan A” rhetoric and just lumping it up field rather than trying to find a defender / midfield to pass it too.
If Cook comes back and all we try and do is lump it up to him then we’ll fail. If Cook comes back and we play the ball out on the floor before trying to cross like we did last night I think we’ve got enough in us.
Looking forward to seeing Cook against Sunderland, think he’s got something to prove after an improvement in form + he hates them!! Coupon buster Saturday!! 
Final note - we’re not a league two team. We are a solid league one outfit just need to get the points to prove it.
Is it any wonder we are where we are after seeing the goals from last night! Especially the second one, I’ve seen overweight sumo"s with a fag in their hand on a Sunday parks pitch deal with those situations better, I’ve only seen Scarr once since he was signed and agree he is awful regarding distribution and his defending ( if I can call it that) is truly remarkable 
To be fair his defending has been good over the past 3 games until the error last night.His distribution however is very poor and shows no sign of improvement.
It’s true that we see games through different eyes.
A couple things I saw differently to some posts above were:
The ref was OK. Nothing at all controversial and he went almost unnoticed. Penalty was a stick on and Gordon’s booking was for dissent. - no issues from me with either.
We didn’t start slowly, in fact we came out of the blocks very quickly and were stopped in our tracks by an idiotic decision by Ferrier.
Scarr is a poor footballer, but he’s been a brick wall in recent games defensively. Something I can’t say of Fitzwater at any point this season.
We need to cut out the wayward passes - Dobson was guilty of this quite a lot last night and their 3rd goal came directly from one of his inaccurate passes.
Scarr should have dealt with the ball that led to Goal #2 but overall his performances in the last few games have been much better than his nervy early games.
We’ve missed Chambers this season, particularly in that respect. We don’t have ball carrying/playing centre halves so we need someone who will sit in front of them as a screen, take short passes and then distribute the ball wisely.
Anyone have a clue what’s happened to him? I assume his season (and probably his career) are over given the lack of updates on him since before xmas.
Have grave doubts that either Chambers or indeed Kory Roberts will kick a ball in a Walsall shirt again, very sad but probably true.
Kory Roberts signed a contract extension in October. Id be extremely surprised if we never see him again.
Not sure on his fitness but he was sat with Kory and others watching on Saturday.
I have some observations on last night’s antics, just from the highlights I saw.
0-1 - It was very naive of Ferrier to bump into their player like that, but I’ll guarantee that if it had been the other way round, any referee would have waved that away and probably made a remark about his breeding for good measure. It was certainly no worse than Osbourne’s innocuous tackle against Accrignton and he’s old enough to know better.
0-2 An unfortunate goal, but the defence was caught napping and left Roberts totally exposed and therefore blameless.
0-3 At least Guthrie attempted to make a telling challenge. It looked like a lucky break to me and his team mates hardly covered themselves in glory covering him. There was plenty for them to do after winning the ball in midfield.
1-3 Referee underlines my earlier comment.
2-3 Frustrating it was so late. 5m earlier and Portsmouth would have had nightmares about another potential 3-3 from 3-0. It could have been a brilliant finish and improbable point, which would have meant so much psychologically.
WM - Mike Taylor is better than this, but should not be led by Rego into the silly pub banter he has on Friday night with Franksy and Tonka. Until last night, I moaned that we weren’t covered enough. If this is the standard we can expect, I’m quite happy for them to ignore us. At least Tom Marlow sounds interested.
Overall - The goals conceded were poor, but six weeks ago this would be have been 1-4 or 1-5 instead of 2-3. We need to make sure that last night was a blip and not the norm.
It’s just Mike Taylor’s style of comms, he actually does the same for a fair few Wolves games.
I agree it dosen’t really translate well if you’re watching it on IFollow.
Have Walsall totally scrapped their own commentary, who does the Saturday games?
I take your point about his style, which is very much like this on T20 cricket and is emminently suitable.
However, he is normally better than last night and I can only imagine that is down to Rego, who is contractually obliged to pretend to be interested.
I don’t even mind if Rego isn’t really interested in us, I’d prefer it if everyone was honest about it.