‘I think Portsmouth…’: What Wayne Rooney had to say on Blues as Plymouth Argyle inflict more Championship pain
Wayne Rooney thinks Pompey lost badly to Plymouth because they ran out of steam.
However, the Blues pushed back his team for extended periods of time at Home Park last night, and the Pilgrims manager recognised the tenacity of their play.Michael Obafemi’s goal gave Rooney’s team a 1-0 victory, ending a run of four games without a victory and enhancing their already impressive home record.
The former Manchester United striker said that Plymouth’s style had flaws, but this time he believed the outcome outweighed the effort.
“First and foremost, I’m thrilled with the three points,” Rooney told Plymouth Live. I wasn’t really hoping for a performance since, with the recent sequence of results, winning the game was the most important thing.
Despite several excellent ball-playing performances this season, tonight’s focus was more on mastering the fundamentals. I believed that we were occasionally overplaying and getting caught in the first half.
I think we performed better in the second half when I tried to get messages on for us to be more direct and land on second balls. Towards the end, Michael helps us achieve the goal. Although the game wasn’t very beautiful, the outcome was what mattered most.
“Portsmouth is a forceful team.” They try to complicate things for you and go man for man. Little details throughout the game had a significant impact.
It was an extremely challenging undertaking for Andre. Although he is fighting the center-backs, I believe Portsmouth grew weary in the closing minutes. From Saturday’s 1-1 draw away to Hull City, they just made one alteration. I believe I made the correct choice in starting Leeds because it only pays off if you win the following game.
We are aware that our goalie is excellent. He has had some really strong performances, and on many of the goals we have given up, there hasn’t been much he could do about it, so I’ve felt bad for him.
We put ourselves in a great position if we can improve our away form. At this moment in time,
With eight minutes left, Obafemi shot past Nicolas Schmid after ignoring Regan Poole’s attentions, giving Pompey manager John Mousinho the opportunity to contest Plymouth’s game-winning goal.
Rooney said the former Southampton player made superb use of his body and didn’t see anything wrong with the finish.
“I felt that was a really good goal,” he continued. He has made good use of his body to ease the centre-back out, and the finish is fantastic. I felt that the substitutes performed incredibly well when they came on, even if we didn’t create many opportunities tonight.
Michael scored the goal after Moose (Bundu) performed well and Callum (Wright) helped us gain possession of the ball and get into some excellent situations.
