Blues 0, Pompey 0

We arrived late for yesterday's game, but still managed to find our seats (right at the front of the new Kop stand) in time for kick-off. We won't sit there again - below pitch-level, and it's impossible to get any kind of perspective as to what's happening at the other end of the pitch.

The game was - charitably speaking - poor, but one point is enough to make us safe for another season. The crowd was poor too - the Pompey fans were noisy (a little limited in terms of variety of song, perhaps, and sadly as obsessed with their local rivals as we are with ours) and reduced to shouting about not singing in case they wake us up. Embarrassing day for Blues fans, and on that performance we didn't deserve more than nil.

Credit to Pompey, who came with a gameplan and stuck to it - Perrin will keep them up no problems, because they were as difficult to beat and break down as we were in our pomp. We had more chances than they, but only one shot on target, and their chances were better than ours.

It was blatantly obvious where the problem lay, though. Steve Bruce once again made room on the team sheet for Damien Johnson in central midfield, pairing him with the equally defensive Mehdi Nafti, who at least got around the pitch, made himself available for the short pass, looked to lay it off to willing midfield partners, and found DJ absent on most occasions (mainly because Nafti was looking for a player in front of him).

When Bruce finally woke up and sent on a more attacking midfielder - Darren Carter (where was Darren Anderton, pray?) - it was too late for Carter to have any impact, and he predictably took off Nafti instead of Damien Johnson to do so.

A little tip for you Bruce: while you continue to pick your favourite player - a great worker, but of limited ambition when he's facing the opponent's end of the pitch (ironic considering he was bought as a right winger) - we will play poor football and struggle to break teams down. In fact, if you're obsessed with picking such a player, maybe you should start offering personal refunds to people who come to watch a game of football?