From comedy defending and consummate attacking during last weekend's 5-3 defeat at West Ham to yesterday's improved defensive offering but lack of finishing in the 2-0 loss at Portsmouth our away day travels continue to be frustrating.

My point of view is that this season is all about experience; and away from home certainly we have to try and let things go over our heads as much as possible but sometimes you can't help tearing your hair out whilst watching.

Yesterday we had ample chances that went begging that eventually cost us the game. Rewind seven says and the opposite happened again with perhaps less clear cut early opportunities being spurned. But nevertheless at the Boleyn Ground we crumbled far too easily with several individual errors putting us five nil down before our spirited fight back. Then yesterday both goals we conceded at Fratton Park were the result of poor positional play from Jensen and Bikey.

I’m quite happy for us to be open and entertaining and even to concede goals given the squad we have but the rate of individual errors needs to be curbed dramatically. Players will always make mistakes but we are better than dropping two or three clangers a game. Maybe we’re unlucky that nearly all of our errors have ended up in the back of the net but that’s unfortunately the nature of the beast (and by that I mean the Premier League and not Brian Jensen).

Although defensively we looked better yesterday, our Premier League crash course needs to start seeing some results before the “we will learn from our individual mistakes” line becomes a meaningless mantra.

In terms of finishing Fletcher could’ve had a hatful; although his easiest chance was gloriously spurned in the first half, the Scot endeavoured all day to create more opportunities for himself and was more often than not centimetres or an Asmir Begovic save away from getting his name on the score sheet.

Kevin McDonald too was unlucky to have his effort thwarted by the Bosnian Canadian stopper. With Owen Coyle reverting back to a 4-4-2 for this game, I was delighted with Big Kevs driving performance in what was his first ever start in the Premier League.

More often than not throughout the game we got ourselves in some dangerous positions but failed to convert. There is also a danger that sometimes we can be too cute when we are stood up in wide positions outside the box and end up trying to walk the ball into the net like a working class Arsenal.

The hammer blow was that the diving Hermann Hreiðarsson opened the scoring before the awful Dindane who missed the subsequent penalty added a second. If anybody didn’t deserve to be Pompey’s heroes it was those two.

Overall, I’m loathed to criticise our players after the fantastic job they’ve done in getting us to thirteenth in the Premier League but at times they aren’t doing themselves justice; and that’s what I can’t stand. If we are beaten with genuine quality then fair enough but at the moment we are making ourselves our own worst enemy.

All I can say is roll on Saturday’s visit of Fulham to Turf Moor so we can try and get another home win to claw our way back up the table and start to get ourselves away from spending Christmas alongside a bunch of relegation turkeys.