00:00Here with Bobby's boss, John Masino. John, you've been fortunate enough to have some wonderful afternoons at Fratton Park and your managerial career here. How does this one rank?
00:09I don't know. Maybe because it's early on in the season and I think it's been sort of coming, this performance at home has been coming.
00:20It feels brilliant. Who knows how high it's going to rank eventually?
00:24I guess there's shades of the Leeds game when Leeds were at the top of the league. That was a lot later on in the season.
00:30I suppose the relegation pressure was a bit more on there. I don't know but I, in a perverse way, enjoyed the afternoon and in another way hated it because it was so stressful.
00:40But I think it was a very, very important move for us.
00:43We just joked off camera and it was never in doubt. But for all their pressure, the lads were stoic and restricted chances really.
00:50Yeah, that's going to have to be the case I think sometimes against these top championship sides.
00:55Middlesbrough were top of the league for a reason and I think they scored the second most goals in the league, hardly conceded one as well.
01:01So it was always going to be tough and we showed, I think, two ways of doing it.
01:07First half, very, very good. I thought expansive on the ball, found Swifty, found Connor Chaplin really well a couple of times.
01:13And, yeah, second half was obviously different. We were a lot deeper. Middlesbrough made changes, tweaked the shape, struggled a little bit with that.
01:21But if we have to go and defend like that, then great. That's where we've got the centre half.
01:25So we've got the players we've got on the pitch and actually everybody there, the whole XI defended very well.
01:30I suppose the one thing for me would be, as we go forward in games like that, can we be a bit better on counter-attack?
01:35Can we look after the ball a little bit better? Can we create a bit of pressure towards the fan end as well, which we didn't quite do in the second half.
01:40But, I mean, it's out on the back foot there and after Wednesday night as well.
01:44Is it extra pleasing to kind of dig in and see that result out?
01:47Yeah, I thought we were going to be tired. We were always wary of that.
01:50I thought Swifty had picked up some really good spots, so some really nice touches in the first half.
01:55Probably came out in the second half and looked tired straight away.
01:57So we decided to make that substitution and we were very wary of that going forward with, just with the output that we're asking from the boys and how much we're asking them to run.
02:04What an afternoon and what a week for Middlesbrough.
02:06Yeah, brilliant week, you know, having his first, making his full league debut for Portsmouth, playing pretty well against it.
02:14Switch didn't get his goal, but played OK. And then excellent the other night against Watford.
02:18I thought even better today, to be fair to him. So three starts in a week, two goals and rightfully receiving the plaudits.
02:25And, you know, let's remember he's a young lad that's coming to a new culture and settling, that's going to take a little adjustment.
02:30Yeah, he's been in the country for less than a year. He's still only 19, still learning the language, coming down to Portsmouth as well for the first time and trying to settle in.
02:39I think he's a brilliant group to come into because the lads look after everyone so well.
02:43But, you know, he would have come in and, you know, he hardly played a minute up until the build-up to the Ipswich game.
02:48I think, actually, after coming up against Oxford this half hour, he hadn't played in the league at all until we started him against Ipswich.
02:54So, you know, I was very, very pleased for Minji across the week. He deserves it and I hope he's very, very confident going into the rest of the season.
03:03Of course, it's a high bar for a big boost to fill in Josh Murphy for Minji.
03:07Yeah, and it's important that we find ways to win and compete without Josh.
03:12Probably something else, something we didn't do particularly well last season when we didn't have Josh on the side of the start of the year.
03:16You know, we're hoping to have him back pretty soon and having that fierce competition at the top end of the pitch.
03:21And, yeah, Minji has stepped into the void and he's done excellent.
03:23And a shout out for your relatively new central defensive partnership there and digging into Josh Knight and Regan in the second half there.
03:30Yeah, and Regan, I guess we're used to seeing those short performances from.
03:37Josh, again, you know, you have to take your hat off to him for, first of all, being able to nearly play three lots of 90 minutes.
03:45He's really tied in that Ipswich game, but first of all, three sets, three starts, improving in every game as well,
03:52finding out some of the creases in this game.
03:54We, you know, we brought Josh in for a reason and I thought, again, he's showing those promising signs today and defending really well.
04:01He looks excellent on the ball.
04:03Defensively, we've got to keep improving upon what he does.
04:05But as a partnership, I thought the pair of them were really impressive, particularly with Regan as well.
04:10We've noticed the other side and dealing with that so well.
04:12How many steps out of the ball have seen that already?
04:14But there was kind of that three or four really important blocks in that second half.
04:17Yeah, again, we need it. We're a side that is progressing, hopefully.
04:22We're going to face sides that are going to have a bit of pressure.
04:25They're going to have shots. They're going to get the ball into wide areas, cutbacks.
04:27And we have to throw bodies on the line and make sure we make it very difficult for the ball to end up in the back of the net.
04:32And I think the lads did that today.
04:33And it looked like it was all for all the world that was going to go for Connor Chaplin in the first half.
04:37And 33 seconds after the second half, just to, you know, agonise him for him, probably.
04:41So, yeah, the chance in the first half we've seen him very time and time again.
04:45And I think the defender managed to get a nick and he went to the corner.
04:48And I think he's done everything right.
04:50Just unfortunately not gone into the back of the net.
04:52And I thought that was it. That was the moment that Connor's going to spark into life.
04:56Second half as well, he's got that chance just wide of the post.
04:59But improvement, I think, from Wednesday night for Connor, improvement from a lot of the players.
05:03And, you know, again, we're asking these lads to come into a new system.
05:08He's been at Ipswich for a number of years on a very different side.
05:11And it's probably going to take a bit of adaptation.
05:13And, yeah, we're thankful that he's coming and he's having an impact.
05:17Look, there's a lot of focus on him.
05:19But the one thing you see about Connor is he's always going to try and do the right things.
05:22He's never going to go hiding.
05:23No, and that's what we want from the players.
05:26I guess trying to look after the ball a little bit better than we did against Ipswich
05:31and certainly against Sheffield Wednesday.
05:33And if we do that, we're going to make mistakes and we're going to give the ball away.
05:36Hopefully doing the right things.
05:37But when you're asking players to either rotate into certain areas or find those pockets as tens,
05:43it's very tight in there.
05:44The space is tight.
05:45It's difficult.
05:46Defenders are physical.
05:47Defenders are very good at the level.
05:48And sometimes we're going to give the ball away.
05:50Obviously, don't enjoy it and hate it.
05:52But if we're asking the lads to play, we're going to have to expect that.
05:56If we want to just go a bit more direct and be a bit safer, we can do that.
06:00But at the minute, I think we're playing some good football.
06:02Just a couple of other bits and pieces.
06:03No goal again for Colby Bishop.
06:05Is there a different threshold for Colby Bishop when it comes to fouls?
06:08I just thought about the second half and then 30 seconds later there was a foul that went against you in the dying embers of the game.
06:15And you do wonder sometimes, perhaps.
06:17Yeah, I thought so today.
06:18It was one of my gripes with the fourth official.
06:22There's obviously that fine line because Colby's physical as well.
06:26But I just thought a couple of the challenges in the second half went over the top.
06:29And down the other end, there were some challenges by our lads that went punished.
06:34I thought he took a pretty nasty elbow to the side of the head as well.
06:37And from our angle, we obviously have the benefit of seeing the replay because we've got the iPad on the bench.
06:42It actually looked like a really poor challenge for me.
06:45Yeah, I don't know.
06:46I've probably felt that consistently for the last two and a half years.
06:50When you talk about Colby getting mauled, he's not a shrinking violet, but I think he needs a little bit more protection in some of the stuff that was over the top.
06:58From Colby's point of view, is it a challenge for him then to keep his eye on the job and not get frustrated in most circumstances?
07:04Yeah, it's almost impossible not to when you're getting battered around like that.
07:07I think Colby can take most of it.
07:08I think probably the time when he got absolutely clattered in the back with that elbow, that was probably the one that was difficult to deal with.
07:14But he dealt with it brilliantly well.
07:16When Colby's not scoring, we know that he gives us that huge physical presence up top.
07:21His pressing is unbelievable.
07:22He leads that from the front.
07:24We know the goals are going to come with Colby.
07:26We've seen this other times.
07:28And probably the slight tweak in terms of the way that we're playing as well.
07:31Maybe that's not quite conducive to creating chances for Colby.
07:34And we have to learn to maybe do a little bit more for him.
07:37Yeah, without Josh Murphy in the side, obviously it's a massive weapon.
07:39That's the sort of stuff that Colby thrives on, isn't it?
07:41Yeah, I suppose if you look at the way that Minjuk plays, he likes to come inside on that right foot.
07:45More link play in the box, less so getting the ball down the line, knocking it past the full-back and whipping it in.
07:51Like against West Brom, like a couple of goals against Reading.
07:53So, yeah, different ways that we have to adjust to playing.
07:57But I still think we can create plenty for him.
07:59And no Josh Murphy today.
08:00Yeah, we're sort of nearly there with him.
08:05We've pushed a couple of things this week to try and get him fit.
08:08But now, obviously, we've got a couple of weeks to make sure that he can properly settle down with his ankle.
08:13And hopefully, we're going to see him for the week where we've got those three games when we come back.
08:17So, he genuinely isn't long-term.
08:19You've seen him around Fratton Park, he's absolutely fine.
08:21And obviously, he signed his new contract, which was brilliant news.
08:24But yeah, we're close with Josh.
08:25And once he's back in, it really provides a lot of competition at the top of the pitch.
08:28I'm guessing if today was a big game at the end of the season, you would have probably rolled him out one way or another.
08:32Yeah, probably.
08:33And we've had to manage that with a couple of injuries Josh has had this year.
08:36He had that slight hamstring injury for the first game of the season against Oxford.
08:39Again, maybe we're pushing through that.
08:41Same with the ankle injury where he was in the side on that Friday morning just before.
08:47But we have to take that long-term view and we have to back the squad as well to be able to fill in.
08:52It's a huge loss for us whenever we lose any one of those types of players.
08:57And yeah, we're going to be grateful to get him back.
09:00And you're going into an international break with a win, which is always pretty nice.
09:04It just makes the next few days a bit nicer.
09:07I was absolutely miserable on Sunday last week.
09:11I was a little bit miserable on Thursday and Friday.
09:13But yeah, I'll be enjoying tonight and just have a little rest for the next couple of days.
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