We won!

I feel obliged to help out Pompey with my presence at the moment as yesterday I helped them secure their first win since November last year.
Manchester City were a fairly dire set of visitors who didn't impress a great deal. However they were also the visitors a couple of years back when Pompey embarked on the Great Escape, by which they escaped threatened relegation. Hopefully yesterday's victory will mark a similar change in this season's fortunes.
Both sides contributed nothing very much to a drab first half. However in the second half Pompey were playing towards the Fratton End and my seat in the North Stand is level with the penalty spot at the Fratton End. The noise we made was deafening at times and truly arousing.
Both Pompey full backs scored. Glen Johnson dribbled into the box, hit one shot which rebounded back to him, persisted and moved parallel to the goal before hitting a stunning volley with his left foot into the roof of the net. The Fratton End erupted and I found myself dancing an insane jig of jubilation with hundreds of total strangers.
The Herminator's goal was a typical header from a cross from approximately the penalty spot. The celebration was almost as loud and as ecstatic except for the sudden realisation that we had at least ten minutes of the match left.
Now this season Pompey have failed to maintain a lead for any length of time and indeed have given the opposition so many goals in the fading minutes or even seconds of a match. You could feel the tension throughout the ground as the Pompey fans expected the worst. However it was not to be and we chalked up a historic victory.
I was also impressed by the number of times I saw Brian Kidd in the technical area calling over midfield players to give them instructions to relay back to their team mates. He looked like he wasn't just exhorting them but rather giving them pointers as to what structure and tasks they needed to do. In other words they were receiving directions rather than reactions.
I thought Basinas made another steady contribution in the middle of the park in front of the two centre backs before he was substituted by Mullins. The latter made an okay contribution but there were a couple of passes that went astray and made the crowd groan in frustration. Pennant went off to be replaced by Belhadj in the centre of the park, which heightened the alarm as the Algerian is a bit reckless and a hot head. I would like to have seen Geras and the youngster Pele but perhaps this wasn't the match.
Robinho was substituted after a very nondescript performance for a £30 million player. Bellamy was booked for truculence after finally getting on the referee's wick - long after he had got up the noses of the crowd, who would have booked him just for being Bellamy. Otherwise the Manchester City missed Wright-Phillips and didn't seem to have much of a cutting edge (remember, they beat us 6-0 at Eastlands earlier in the season!)
Paul Hart wasn't in evidence compared with Mark Hughes who seemed to get quite animated in his technical area on occasions. It is a shame his team weren't as animated as their manager. I thought Brian Kidd looked like a very good acquisition for Pompey and hope he is with us for a time. I hope he is a portent that his previous boss, Sven Goran Ericsson, is on his way as the new Pompey boss. In previous posts I expressed the opinion that Avram Grant would join us soon and that I wasn't particularly adverse to his arrival - he did a good job as stand in Chelsea manager last season. However SGE would be something else again and would show the football world and the Premier League that Pompey still have ambitions. We also no longer need to look fondly back on the feats of the previous manager but one. "The Blue Army", the Pompey tribal chant that still raises the hairs on the back of my neck, doesn't need a name attached to it - it still has a power of its own. The team earned back some of its pride yesterday and the crowd saluted them.