Yates Pleased With Portsmouth Display

Manager Mark Yates has said he’s very pleased following the performance against Portsmouth last weekend, as although it wasn’t exactly a scintillating attacking display, it was a good solid performance, with a good clean sheet and was a good way to build on the victory over Bury.

Speaking to the Official Site following our first visit to Fratton Park, our gaffer explained.

‘It was a great atmosphere in the second half when they perhaps had a little bit more play than we would’ve liked but the players stood up to it superbly well. There was a goalmouth scramble at the end but apart from that I can’t really remember them creating too much.’

Yates admits that we didn’t test their goalkeeper nearly enough during the 90 minutes, and we didn’t actually have a shot on target according to the stats but in return we limited them to only one shot on target themselves, so given it is a tough place to come as plenty of teams have discovered this season because of the noise the crowd makes, it’s difficult for the gaffer to be anything but pleased with a good point on the day.

In terms of our overall performance he was pleased with the way we kept our shape and our overall discipline on the day, but he did feel we gave the ball away too cheaply on a number of occasions and there were obviously points he feels we could’ve done a lot better, both in terms of offensively and defensively.

‘Overall I’m quite happy with the way they worked and we were never in doubt of losing the game.’

The first half was the stand out half for him though as he felt they struggled to live with us at points, but unfortunately we just didn’t make them count, and the second half was tighter in his mind but we remained solid and organised, but again he admits at the end they did shade it, but on balance he felt a draw was the fair result to both teams.

The disappointment for the gaffer comes in wishing that Ashley Vincent’s woodwork effort had been an inch or so lower, as he feels if we’d have scored at that stage we could well have gone on to really get a foothold in the game and might have added a second or third with the momentum swinging our way as that does seem to be how games go for us at the moment, but it wasn’t to be so we have to be pleased with the single point and really take the positive from another hard earned clean sheet.

Now if we can build on that again when we face Oxford in the midweek fixture then this will look like a very good mini run for us.