View: Portsmouth desperate for Poole return after 33% McIntyre horror show v Derby
Portsmouth were beginning to show huge signs of defensive improvement in recent games, but that came to a shuddering halt with a 4-0 thrashing by Derby County.
Derby – who came up alongside Pompey from League One last term – were superior in every area of the pitch on Friday night [13 December], and goalkeeper Nicolas Schmid was the sole player who could leave the pitch with his head held high.
Tom McIntyre made his first start since an error in the defeat at Plymouth Argyle on 5 November, having replaced Regan Poole at half-time of the goalless draw with Norwich City last Tuesday [10 December].
The centre-half was one of several to have a real game to forget, regularly losing his man, deflecting a shot into the net, and getting passed by Derby forwards like he was barely there.
Tom McIntyre summed up Portsmouth defence v Derby
On a night when Terry Devlin had an anomaly from his recent form, Marlon Pack clattered one past his own goalkeeper and Josh Murphy completely fell asleep to let the hosts open the scoring, McIntyre was far from alone in his shocking display.
But he is a far better player than what he showed at Pride Park, losing Ebou Adams for the third goal as the Derby man peeled away from the centre-half and scored a scrappy finish that ended up wrong-footing Schmid off his own deflection.
Pack’s own goal to make it four was McIntyre’s fault in major part, with Marcus Harness skipping past him like a knife through butter. It was indicative of kamikaze defending all round.
McIntyre was busy at the back and did make 16 defensive contributions against the rampant Rams. He was, however, dribbled past three times, won just 38 per cent of his eight duels on the ground, and won neither of his two attempted tackles [Fotmob].
Distribution from the 26-year-old left a lot to be desired, too, with just 33 percent of his long passes finding a teammate, often under little pressure, and eight short passes cut out by Derby.
Having signed from Reading last season, McIntyre got sent off and injured on his debut and missed a lengthy period, recovering alongside Poole – but it seems the latter has adjusted to Championship football the better of the two.
As shown by Fotmob data, McIntyre has already been dribbled past seven times this season (three of them on Friday night), and has won just 58 percent of his total duels as forwards often find the better of him.
Poole has not found it easy, either, though his drawback is usually struggling in possession while being able to execute the defensive basics. As FBref illustrates, Poole is in the bottom six percentile of defenders playing at a similar level for pass completion [73.7 per cent].
John Mousinho has the arduous task of finding the balancing act of importance when his side are regularly under the cosh in Championship contests.
With Conor Shaughnessy’s mysterious calf setbacks continuing to rule him out and Ryley Towler clearly not fancied by his head coach, January could become an interesting month for Pompey defensively.
In other Portsmouth news, David Norris reveals the one advantage of when the Blues did not play for three weeks.
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