Portsmouth vs Arsenal - Fratton Park, Portsmouth - Wednesday 12th April 2006

Fratton Park is the worst ground in the Premiership, and that is a fact. No roof on the away end, in fact it is just some seats bolted to an open terrace, which has weeds growing out of it. One refreshment place, with one person serving. Queues for that and the loos which basically block the path of anybody trying to get into the ground, bringing everything to a grinding halt. The locals are classic products of a small town, cut off from the rest of the country, and can tend towards the psychopathically violent. It is outrageously windswept, and it almost always rains.

Strangely, despite all this, Portsmouth away is one of my favourite games. Not too far to travel, and the whole experience of their "stadium" takes you back to what it was like to watch football before everything became all-seater. Good to know that a place only an hour and a half from London can still recreate an authentic 1980s experience.

Arsenal rested lots of players today, which seemed a strange thing to do against a team fighting for their lives, on their own ground, and when Arsenal really need the points to push for 4th place (how strange that would have sounded a year ago - "push for 4th place"). Many thought it would have been more sensible to rest players against West Brom at home, rather than Pompey away, and its hard to disagree with that.

Portsmouth showed exactly why they are in relegation trouble, because they really aren't a particularly good football team. They also showed why they may well stay up anyway, because all of their players really seem to want to. They all put in maximum effort (more than that in some cases), and despite not being very good, they just seemed to want the result more than Arsenal on the day.

Arsenal could and should have been 4 goals up by the time Portsmouth equalised - and probably would have been were it not for Adebayor's awful finishing. A fairly miserable night finished when Sol Campbell walked off with a broken nose - still, at least that means we get our first choice defenders back now!!

Qualifying for next season's Champions League is going to be difficult, if we continue to need to juggle priorities, rest players, and pick up injuries. Here's hoping that, one way or another (or maybe both ways!) we manage to do it.