Pompey 0 - West Ham 0 and Green for England
West Ham weathered an early storm from Portsmouth to finish the first half looking the more comfortable. Early on Portsmouth pushed hard going forward and on 8 minutes Kranjcar fired in a dipping shot from 30 yards but Green was equal to the shot and pulled off a great save. Form the resulting corner Mendes shot from 20 yards but missed the left goalpost by inches. A minute later and Green made another good save, this time with his feet from a Gabbidon deflection.
After about 15 minutes West Ham seemed to settle down and on the 20 minute mark Mark Noble had an attempt on goal for West Ham, shooting over from a long way out. Three minutes later and the best chance of the half came to Solano, who should have headed home a Cole cross from three yards out but failed to connect properly with the ball.
In the dying seconds of the half West Ham pressured the Portsmouth box which culminated in a free-kick to West Ham 20 yards out. Solano's kick however was easily gathered by James in goal and the half ended 0-0.
Bellamy came off at half time with a knock to be replaced by Etherington. The change seemed to suit West Ham as Etherington's pace down the left gave West Ham a better outlet from defence. In fact after a Pompey push in the first few minutes West Ham were the better team and on balance probably deserved to win the game.
West Ham's best chance of the half again fell to Solano who, again, missed with his head. If anything this was an even easier chance than the one in the first half. The opportunity came after some good build up play that finished with an Etherington pass to Cole in the box who turned his defender and fired in a shot from about ten yards. His shot rebounded back off the crossbar and fell to Solano a couple of yards out with only an empty net in front of him. However Solano again failed to get a decent head to the ball and headed wide of the goal.
In the dying seconds and with the game looking like it was heading towards a draw Gabbidon handballed on the edge of the area. The referee gave Portsmouth a penalty. Green stood tall, Benjani shot low down to Green's left and Green got down well and pushed the ball away.
In all a much better performance and a good point away from home against a side that has been in superb form. Come On You Irons!
posted by Keir Clarke @ 6:02 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
i'm not sure why you never have comments on for dicussion, based on your posts but i just wanted to let you know that your blog makes great reading, i daily check in for the latest round up, and i honestly think, that for that purpose, yours is the best on the net. come on you irons!
Agreed Darren, 100%. Keep it up!
Thanks.
If you click on a link to a post under Previous Posts (in the right hand column) the comments appear under the post on the page.
how many people read the blog, any idea?
I read your blog every day!
i also read it every day. darren, in order to find out the statistics on this excellent blog, on the home page, scroll down on the right hand side until you see the "site meter". click on that and you should be able to get all sorts of neat information.
Darren, Here's a fairly full answer:
Readership goes up and down a bit. Strangely in the close season (presumably because of interest in potential transfers) there are about a thousand hits a day.
During the season I get about 500 a day. On a match day it tends to go up again to about 1000. On weekends (on a non-match day) traffic can drop to about 300, so I assume a lot of people are reading this blog at work when they should be working.
90% of the visitors each day are people who have visited the site before, so I think there is a fairly loyal readership.
The site is close to reaching a quarter of a million page views since it started about 18 months ago.
From the average 3000 hits a week I make about £3 in advertising, so I reckon I'm on something like 20p an hour doing this.
My other blog Virtual Tourism (there is a link on the main page - check it out it's quite interesting) gets about a fifth of the traffic of this blog but makes about three times as much in advertising (still a teeny sum) which again I think reflects the loyalty on this site. Regular visitors know where to look on the page so tend not to notice the advertising so much.
I hope that answers the question - and thanks for reading the blog.
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