True to form my head was pounding on New Year’s Day following the previous evenings excessive intake of alcoholic beverages but all was good in the world by fulltime on New Year’s Day as Southend came from behind to beat Portsmouth, just as we did at Fratton Park, two-one with a winner from Leonard in added time.
It would be fair to say that Portsmouth had the better of the first half, the much better really and Bentley showed why he’s well ahead of Smith when it comes to being the Southend number one as he made a string of wonderful saves to prevent the likes of Holmes and Wallace from putting Portsmouth ahead.
A defender finally beat Bentley when Bradley tucked home a corner to put Portsmouth in front on 30 minutes, it was a lead that they’d deserved really. Southend still managed to draw level before half time as Leonard let fly, if you don’t buy a ticket you can’t win the raffle as they say can you. His effort on 42 minutes might have been deflected on its way but it ended up in the back of the Portsmouth net.
The tactical changes that Brown made worked and even though Portsmouth had the better of the second half chances too, including the crossbar coming to our rescue with Wallace hitting it from range, with a draw looming Leonard decided that he had other ideas. The 90 minutes were up when he again let fly for the second time on the afternoon with the same result, a goal but no deflection this time as he struck cleanly into the corner of the net in the second minute of added time.
Portsmouth with feel hard done by, I know I would if it happened to us, but Brown said recently that we’ll get some luck coming our way and we’ve got to make the most of this with the New Year starting perfectly for Southend.
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