The (bad) luck of the Irish

In my last post I made the point that, on the pitch, I didn't feel Pompey had been unlucky of late. The three games since Redkanpp left should have yielded seven points, and the failure to come away with this was down to the players rather than Tony Adams or misfortune.

Having said that, if any club was due some luck then it was us. As I also noted on my previous post, you couldn't fault the player's recent effort. You could criticise their lack of concentration, and you can't legislate for Diop's moments of madness. But the effort has been outstanding. Add in all the off-pitch drama, and no one could say the team, the coaches or the fans have had an easy month.

The decision to award Pompey a penalty on Saturday was the right one, and so you couldn't call it 'lucky'. It was a clear foul, and replays have shown that contact was made in the penalty area. However, late into injury time, away from home, you don't expect those decisions to go for you. And in that respect we can consider ourselves to have enjoyed a bit of the good fortune that we surely deserve. The icing on the cake was that it was Diouf who committed the foul - a player who has a somewhat rocky relationship with Pompey!

It's often said that in football you make your own luck - and you could say this was true of us against Sunderland. The penalty came late on, and was the result of the team putting in the effort right to the death. It was by no means a perfect performance, but a battling display away from home, coming from behind to win the game, certainly gives us hope for the future.

I think we know a bit more about Adams as a manager following the game. On this showing, he seems to have inherited Redknapp's ability to inspire a second half performance when the team fails to show up for the first 45 minutes. I am not going to shower him with praise at this point, in the same way as I'm not going to lambast him when he runs into teething problems. He needs time, and as I've said before on this blog, I don't think he can be truly judged until January at the earliest when we see which players are still behind him and the club.

It is very encouraging to hear the likes of James, Crouch, Kranjcar and Defoe making the right noises about wanting to stay at the club and having respect for Adams. The true test of their words will be in January and next summer. Distin's interview in The News today is likely to reflect the feelings of other players. They were brought to the club on the promise of big plans for the future; they were to be part of a Pompey revolution, and the first players to walk out in the new stadium.

While I would hope the players don't follow Harry (surely they'll remember that he sold them a dream and then...) I'm just not confident that some of them will be satisfied with Pompey in the long term. Although, as I have also noted before, the decision may well be taken out of their's and Tony's hands depending on the financial situation the club is in come the transfer window.