Portsmouth Football Club News

Spirit. A word that Tony Adams felt perfectly summed up Pompey’s performance against Blackburn. The Blues had roared into a two-goal lead at Fratton Park with strikes from Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe, only for the visitors to fight back and draw level. With AC Milan doing exactly the same thing to grab a point in the UEFA Cup on Thursday, Pompey heads could easily have dropped. But instead they dug deep and were rewarded when Sean Davis came off the bench to grab a late winner. And Adams believes the victory shows the strength of mind running right the way through his squad. “Spirit is the word for me,” said the Blues boss. “To concede another two goals after leading again – you’ve got to have great spirit at your club to react positively to that. “It can dent you mentally and psychologically but the surging run that Papa went on that led to our winner showed a lot of spirit. “I said to the guys after the game that it showed fantastic spirit for them to come back and win the game. “With the way that games have been going, you start to think that you’re going to lose. I had us down to lose 3-2. “But we’ve got tremendous spirit. The boys battled away and Sean nicked a fantastic goal. “Some intelligence and maturity then kicked in and we saw Jermain Defoe get the ball and run it into the corner to run the clock out.” All the action happened in the second half after a tepid opening 45 minutes at Fratton Park. And Adams revealed that he had a lot of work to do at the interval to get his players into shape. He said: “I didn’t think that we played particularly well in the first half. We had one great chance with Peter Crouch right at the end of the half but I thought that we were fortunate to go in level at the break. “I had to motivate them during the break because we looked flat. “I had to earn my money and shake things up at half-time. Niko came on because he can open up doors. “We destroyed them in the opening 15 minutes of the second half and were exceptional. “I was having dialogue with the fans by the dugout. They were saying ‘we’ve won now’, but I said ‘no, we need three’. “When a team gets one back they quite often go on to get another. “But it was fortunate for us that they equalised more than 20 minutes to go because it gave us the opportunity to get the winner.” Replacing Armand Traore with Davis late on may have been viewed by some as a negative switch. But it won the game for Pompey as the midfielder grabbed his first Blues goal since netting against West Ham in March 2006. Rather than lap up the praise for such inspired tactics, however, Adams was quick to reveal who the real mastermind was. “The substitution was suggested by Paul Groves – I’m not going to take the credit,” he laughed. “Sean gave us legs. Papa and Richard Hughes have been exceptional in central midfield but we were starting to run out of steam and I needed to get some legs into the team. “But I needed Papa to stay on the pitch as well because of Blackburn’s aerial threat.”

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