Tombwfc

I thought we were great today. It's one thing dominating Wigan and not winning, but if you play like that against the Champions you deserve a lot of credit. Famous last words, but I can't see a side beating us over two legs in the playoffs. And then Wembley will be a lottery - we played a team miles better than us last year and won 4-0.

If we beat Bristol we're one point behind on the same games, which is nothing. Nobody would be counting their chickens if we were one point ahead of them. For as long as we're within two points we can force them to keep winning and that's very difficult at this time of year (particularly away from home). Most bookies have us around evens for promotion (which I assume includes the playoffs). That feels about right to me. Not favourites, but it wouldn't take a miracle for us to get in.

Would we have gotten a result in the same circumstances? Defending well and taking your chances is all part of the game.

Could've been better, could've been worse. A lot is going to happen in these next five games so no point looking too far ahead.

Neither us or Derby are going to win all of our remaining games, regardless of tonights result. The 'it's in our hands' stuff is pointless.

Aye, so surely Derby are the ones who have something to be crying about?

I still think there's something there with him, and I could be totally wrong about his attitude as far as it transmits to the players. And to be fair, this would be his first failure after three good seasons. I wouldn't have a huge amount of confidence in him. But I think he's shown enough to deserve the chance to prove beyond all doubt that he's not the man for the job.

This might be unfair, but I feel like at some stage Evatt loaded so much pressure onto himself - his Pep comparisons, Barrow/Bolton-lona, managing in the Premier League in five years - that us struggling is more about him saving face than motivating the team. It's like late period Mourinho, everything is against us, everything is someone else's fault, the players are scared, the fans are cunts. If everyone would just respect his genius and get out of the way we'd be fine. I'm still broadly behind him, to the point I'd give him another crack at it even if he fails this year. But all managers have a shelf life, and a character like Evatt, when the wheels come off things will really turn sour. I feel like this is his chance with us.

Two seasons in a row we've spent very good money for this level on strikers who have immediately underperformed. If we don't go up, that failure in recruitment will be the single biggest reason. Over £1m on Vic, Collins and Dan. Collins, Bod and Jerome have four goals for us this season. A past-it Dwight Gayle has three in less than a 10th of the number of appearances. But, having said that, someone had it right yesterday. I wouldn't have swapped our XI yesterday for Stevenage's, nor Exeter's or Blackpool's or Wigan's. We had the better players in these matches and didn't win any of them.

And yet they did deal with him, as every team does. 33 appearances and 0 goals for a centre forward playing for a promotion chasing team is properly hopeless. Jerome, Collins and Bod have four goals between them in 67 appearances for us this season. They are all collectively a huge problem. Jerome's only saving grace is that he didn't cost us 750k.

12th in the league since January. 5 wins in 14 games. It's not over til it's over, but that's pretty damning. Nowhere near as good as we think we are.

We've won 13 from 19 so far at home, averaging over two goals a game. There will only have been a small handful of seasons in the past 30 years where we've, on paper, given home fans more to shout about. I don't think Evatt or the team could've done much more. Home fans are generally pretty reserved in most places. Also to be fair a number of the sides who've turned up at the Reebok have been woeful and uncompetitive. It'd still be soft as shite to be worrying about a few extra hundred Pompey fans though.

People aren't going to move from under the scoreboard in the ESL, where they've been able to stand anyway for decades (and balloon nearish some away fans). Nor will there ever be the will to make sure people there sit. So having this in the North Stand sounds like a mess waiting to happen. It'll just piss off a load of people who'll have to move, or they won't move and instead just complain about sporadic standers who've turned up near them. It's something that should happen, but there needs to be some realism that we've had safe standing at the Reebok for a long time now. This is just making it official.

Then win? Or sell those tickets ourselves? Or create more noise in our own ends? If we can't do any of that, then that's on us. But a football club choosing empty seats over fans for tactical reasons is about as soft as it gets. It's a sport meant to be enjoyed by fans at the end of the day. Incidentally, we could've sold half the stadium at Blackpool and Wigan and it wouldn't have stopped us getting beat.