'Pompey fought for their lives'
Portsmouth on the verge of Championship survival following narrow Leicester win.
[Shutterstock] To say a team wanted it more has become very cliched in football, an easy retrospective analysis to say about the team that won. But it feels relevant. Pompey fought for their lives and it was enough to beat a side that is more talented on paper.
It was a poor spectacle, with Pompey failing to reach to levels of Tuesday's win over Ipswich. Losing Terry Devlin and Keshi Anderson in the opening 20 minutes was unfortunate and did not help the match find a rhythm. Before last Saturday, Pompey had not kept a clean sheet since January.
They have now had three in a row. They have also scored three times from corners in that time. Football is a game of fine margins.
Portsmouth are not safe yet but it would now take an unlikely sequence of results to send them down. The turnaround since the 6-1 thrashing at QPR has been incredibly impressive. Survival would be a great achievement.