Pompey 1 Charlton 2 (03/04 Season)
1-0 up and cruising, Charlton had not even looked like scoring but two late goals meant Charlton stole victory at Fratton Park this season.
Charlton 2 Pompey 1 (04/05 Season)
After equalising through one of the best goals you will ever see from a Pompey player, Charlton get another flukey victory after an Unsworth header manages to find its way between Shaka Hislops legs.
Pompey 1 Charlton 2 (05/06 Season)
1-0 up at half time after battering the Charlton goal, two goals in the second half mean Charlton complete a turnaround in a game we should have won.
You can now add a fourth mugging to that list. One which has elements of all of those three previous games.
Firstly, the performance from the lads was excellent today. One of the best this season especially considering how the team are supposed to be "knackered". If anything that fact has pissed me off even more because Charlton did absolutely nothing for over 70 minutes and two minor lapses in defence have cost us the result.
Going back to the previous game references, this miscarriage of justice has the two late goals from the first mugging, a wonderful goal by Andres D'Alessandro in parallel with the events of the second mugging and the fact that Charlton hardly had any attempts on our goal today, yet managed to score two whilst we had many chances today and only managed to score a solitary goal. Very similar to the events of mugging number three.
I am still in disbelief because of the way we lost this match, it completely baffles me. The defence on the whole were good, especially Linvoy who was a rock once again. Gary O'Neil and D'Alessandro were full of running whilst Hughes and Davis battled hard in the centre of midfield. Benjani did everything right today apart from score, the lad really does deserve a goal. All Charlton could do was hoof it up to Darren Bent. We were the better side by a distance.
Still, the extent of the damage of this loss is still unknown. West Brom could only manage a home draw against Bolton so we now lie anxiously in wait for Birmingham to host Blackburn on Wednesday. There are positives to draw from today though. Pompey are not playing like a relegation threatened team, even when we're without key players such as Mendes and Lua Lua. With those two back beating Sunderland next week shouldn't be too difficult. Also the law of averages suggest that we had to be beaten eventually, and would you prefer it to be now where we can bounce back against Sunderland or lose at Wigan and have that defeat affect the team for a nerve wracking final day against Liverpool?
In summary, this defeat shouldn't affect us too much. We played well, should have won but if we play like that the rest of the season with a full strength squad we should take the points needed to survive in this league.