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Portsmouth 1 - 2 Reading FC Capital One Cup: The Alternative View

A distinctly damp night on the South coast; Dave looks at the views of the Pompey social media scene and the news outlets.

By davemc_exile
Ben Hoskins/Getty Images

After three league draws and a hard-fought win at Colchester, it would seem only fair to assume that many saw this game as a potential giant killing. Readings form in front of goal has been—at best—blunt, and after Pompey's heroics in dispatching Derby, proved that this could be a tricky tie.

In the end Reading ran out winners in normal time and continued their Cup pedigree, with a home draw in the next round against either Barnsley or Everton was the prize.

The Pompey fans seemed to have a number of themes around the game, primarily in the early stages a rather crowd and massive queues to get into the game, here's a selection of their thoughts below.

Social

I think it's only right to start with an impeccably observed minute's silence for the people who were killed in the Shoreham accident at the weekend.

An Englishman loves to queue....

The author George Mikes once said, "An Englishman, even if he is alone, forms an orderly queue of one"—that showed true form last night and did in essence have the Pompey Twitterazzi up in arms.

Given that this probably one of the biggest crowds that have been at Fratton Park for a while it's understandable that there were a couple of issues getting in. How many League 2 sides will have an excess of 2,000 away fans?

Portsmouth however should be applauded for introducing sensible ticket pricing introduced for this game which led directly to the attendance.

Keystone cop defending...

I think its only fair to say that some of our defending and primarily for the goal that Pompey scored, left a little to be desired. Being the Capital One Cup, then it's also good to see goals being broadcast by Sky soon after they where scored and of cause as soon as they are then Social Media grabs screenshots and goes viral.

However this will prove to give Hector and Al-Habsi a few sleepless nights as communication obviously wasn't their strongest point...

However the game did run out with Reading the 2-1 winners thanks to a goal from the returning Garath McCleary and the fans verdict was a little split...

But as always, there are some people who don't see it that way...

Kit woes again...

I am beginning to think that whoever designed our new away kit did it in such a fashion that it would get coverage due to the colour of it.

This to me is starting to look like really good marketing and if I am being honest our away kit is starting to grow on me. However once again it seemed to be a "purple patch" that away fans seem to like commentating on!

The dark side of the game

Unfortunately, the ugly side of football reared it's head last night. Whilst we all indulge in a little bit of banter with the players and fans of opposing teams, there has to be a limit. Judging by reaction on Twitter and the press last night it seems that there have been alleged reports of racial abuse to Nick Blackman, which must be stamped out if we are to progress our game.

It's good to see fans of all clubs are united in eradicating this from out sport.

Ok, so thats the Pompey views looked at, how did the news outlets react?

Media

In true Cup style most of the reports are on either giant killings or Premier League clubs, so with Reading beating a League 2 side there is precious little coverage of our win from the mainstream media.

As ever SkySports have a nice little video package online, of the game and give a succinct report of it, we get a couple of lines in the Express and Clubcall pretty much pick up Sky's report.

The local Portsmouth online paper, The News, also carry a report about the alleged abuse for Nick Blackman as well as a match roundup.

GetReading give a fairly honest appraisal of the match and given that Charles Watts gives the MOM to Garath McCleary, it's pretty obvious that up till his return it was a pretty dire match from the Reading aspect with no one standing out.

The BBC carry a brief write-up and also have a report on Garath McCleary, saying that he needs more time to get back to full fitness.

Apart from that the media is pretty quiet on Reading as most of the headlines are taking up with the Fake Hoops being knocked out and the draw which has thrown up some interesting ties.

I will be back after the weekend with a roundup of how the Brentford fans saw us and the game itself.

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