Unfortunately, the second half was badly disrupted before it had really begun. Tendayi Darikwa going down four minutes after the restart was a massive moment. We had barely settled into the half, and I was expecting us to come out and have a real go at Portsmouth, but suddenly our captain was injured and we were having to improvise. He was reportedly on crutches afterwards, which immediately makes you fear this is not simply a knock he will shake off before next weekend. Losing him would be a significant blow at any point, but it felt particularly awkward here because Josh Honohan had been left out of the matchday squad.
That meant Andrei Coubiș coming on and effectively having to operate at right-back. He is a big, powerful defender and there were moments where he looked perfectly capable physically, but he is primarily a centre-half, and it felt like it naturally altered our approach. Tom could perhaps have moved across, but that would have meant breaking up the central defensive partnership, so there was no obvious solution. Whatever the answer might have been, I do not think we ever really recovered our rhythm afterwards. We should have been the team building momentum and forcing Portsmouth deeper, but the injury meant we spent the opening stages of the half trying to reorganise rather than applying pressure.
I was also a little surprised to see Ivan Varfolomeev withdrawn because I thought he had been having a decent afternoon. Tom Bayliss came on, and I like Tom as a player, but I do not think he ever quite got himself up to the speed of this particular game. When you consider that Tendayi, Ivan and Dom all left the pitch, you are taking an enormous amount of energy out of the side. The replacements are not necessarily inferior footballers, but the personality of the team changed. We stopped looking like the side that had started the game with such aggression, and that was probably more significant than any individual substitution.
Then came the third goal, and that is another moment where we have to learn very quickly. Andrei gives the ball away, Portsmouth have the opportunity to attack us, and Ebou Adams produces an outstanding finish. Again, you can look at the strike and say that is Championship quality, because it absolutely is. However, there comes a point where we have to stop simply admiring that quality and start asking why we are giving players the opportunity to show it. Adams was allowed to move forward with the ball before unleashing his effort. We had made the mistake that created the situation in the first place, and once you give a player of that ability the invitation, you cannot be surprised when he accepts it.
That is probably my biggest takeaway from the first few games. We keep conceding goals where the initial reaction is to admire how good the finish was. There was Sammie Szmodics producing quality, Middlesbrough had players capable of producing those Championship moments, and Portsmouth have now done the same thing. Fine, that is the level. We knew it would be. But eventually we either need to start producing those moments ourselves or become much better at stopping the opposition from getting opportunities to produce them. You cannot spend a season shrugging at goals and saying, “That’s the Championship.” At some stage, we have to show Championship quality ourselves.
The strange thing is that 3-1 still did not feel completely representative of the game to me. I would not have complained had it finished 2-2 (obviously), but equally I cannot argue that Portsmouth did not deserve to win. They were slightly quicker and considerably more clinical when the big moments arrived. We still got balls into their penalty area, still worked Schmid and still had opportunities, but there were too many sloppy passages of play and too many occasions where we tried something technically difficult and could not quite execute it. Here’s the thing – our xG was double theirs (first mention of the season!). We had more shots and more box entries (according to FotMob; Wyscout stats not out yet), and we lost 3-1. Yes, it’s fine margins, and that makes it harder to take. Last weekend, I would have felt better losing 3-0 and knowing we deserved it, rather than a last-gasp defeat when it was so close. This weekend, a heavy defeat would be easier to take if we hadn’t been on the wrong side of fine margins.
Oddly, I think the defeat might actually give Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw a little more freedom. After Middlesbrough, there was no real reason to rip anything up because we had gone away to one of the division’s stronger sides, competed extremely well and lost in stoppage time. You could not realistically respond to that by making five changes, leaving new faces and real quality out of the side. Now things are different. We have lost again, Tendayi may be unavailable, and there are players waiting for their opportunity. Andrei is our record signing. Yunus Konak has arrived with an excellent reputation. Josh is a player we hope can effectively feel like a new signing after missing so much football, while Callum Elder, Mason Melia and Tanto Olaofe are all options we have barely seen yet.
Tuesday’s cup game gives the coaches an obvious opportunity to look at several of those players, but I also think the door is open for somebody to force their way into the Championship side for Bolton. There were players today who were not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, but perhaps did not do enough to make the shirt untouchable. That is an important distinction. Nobody needs throwing under the bus after two league games, particularly when so many of these players were outstanding for us last season, but promotion means standards change. The players who got us here deserved the opportunity to show they could make the step, and now some of the new arrivals deserve the opportunity to show whether they can take us another step forward.
I thought there were some frustrating refereeing moments as well, although I do not think any of them decided the game. There seemed to be inconsistencies around how quickly Portsmouth were encouraged to restart play compared with what we experienced at Middlesbrough, where the referee seemed very keen to prevent us from slowing anything down. Conor having to leave the pitch after a stoppage despite not receiving treatment confused me, and there were a couple of challenges on Freddie that I thought went the wrong way. None of those things are excuses for losing 3-1, but Championship football is going to be about tiny margins, and when those little moments start stacking up they become increasingly noticeable.
There were also some odd offsides. One Reeco cross was backwards, marginally, from a deeper position to the back edge of the box, and it got given as offside. If the ball is played backwards, you’re not offside, right? Right? I wasn’t impressed with Tony Harrington at all, he didn’t get anything fundamentally wrong, and he did give us the penalty when other referees might not, but a couple of the decisions and processes felt odd.
Off the field, it was also a slightly strange afternoon because the revamped Sincil Bank looked superb while still feeling unfinished around the edges. The colour scheme works, the new areas make a real difference and the pre-match video was exactly the sort of thing that can help build an intimidating atmosphere, even if the sound briefly cutting out rather spoiled the effect. There were also obvious teething problems, including flooding around parts of the ground and a scoreboard that seemed determined to show me an advert whenever I wanted to know the match time. None of that is particularly concerning because the stadium clearly still has finishing touches to come, but there was an odd parallel with what happened on the pitch.
The encouraging part is that the squad is not finished. Mikkel Ladefoged was watching from the stand with Jez George, and Tom has suggested further additions are coming. Whoever those players turn out to be, I still think we need more at the attacking end of the pitch. Ben and Freddie have both impressed me enormously, but Freddie is probably our most natural finisher and spends so much of his time battling with his back to goal that he is not always getting into the positions where that finishing ability can hurt opponents. We need another dimension, whether that comes from a striker, somebody carrying the ball from wider areas or simply another player with the sort of Championship quality we spent the afternoon watching Portsmouth demonstrate.
Nobody should be panicking. We are two league games into a season we always knew would be extraordinarily difficult, and the defeat at Middlesbrough gave us plenty of evidence that we can compete. However, I also do not want us to become a team that keeps finding positives in defeats indefinitely. Eventually you need points. Portsmouth at home was one of the fixtures I looked at before the season and thought we could win, which makes losing it 3-1 considerably more sobering than being beaten in stoppage time at Middlesbrough. These are the games where we are going to need to collect points if we want to establish ourselves.
Maybe this was the culture shock we needed. Maybe the Derby cup win and the performance at Middlesbrough allowed us to believe the transition from League One would be relatively smooth. Today suggested otherwise. We were not battered, we were not completely outplayed and we did not look hopelessly out of our depth. In some ways, that makes the lesson even clearer. We looked competitive, created chances, worked hard and had long periods where there was very little between the sides, yet we still lost 3-1.
That is the Championship. The margins are smaller, but the punishment is bigger.
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