Least said, Souness better

YOU wouldn't really want to wish an afternoon like this on your worst enemy, but your relatively-new manager....well, that's another matter altogether.

Graeme Souness is very clearly nobody's mug but even he perhaps needed to see for himself just what kind of mediocrity has been served up on occasions at Ewood this season as an apology for entertainment.

So, instead of a few half-hearted boos and a general chorus of groans, the end of a tortuous couple of hours should have been greeted with a vote of thanks.

Now the new boss knows exactly why Blackburn Rovers are perched in mid-table going nowhere when they might have been leading the chase back to the Premiership.

And he faced up to the damning truth afterwards, pointing out that Rovers simply did not do anything like enough, individually or collectively, to entertain or win against a Portsmouth team relieved to have escaped the relegation trapdoor.

It didn't take him many words to sum up their combined efforts -- "unacceptable" was the one which proved most palateable.

Souness has made it plain there is to be no mass clearout but there will, undoubtedly, be significant moves. Any more performances like this and they are likely to increase in number. You could fashion excuses for some, with Lee Carsley playing his first senior game for two and a half months after injury and Garry Flitcroft looking like he may need until the start of next season to be the player we knew before.

Then there was teenager Ben Burgess. It was a brave move to give the striker his debut and Souness could not have envisaged that the rest of the team would have struggled as much.

Burgess deserved some sympathy as he was left to flounder with little support. Still, his time will come again which might not be true for some of his team-mates once the curtain finally comes down on this sorry season.

Having stressed the priority of entertaining and exciting the fans, as well as making sure you win matches, Souness did not even get one out of three from the team he selected on Saturday.

That perhaps came as less of a surprise to those who have seen most of Rovers' matches and are well aware of their failings.

It's difficult to script a constructive account of such a scrappy encounter, because there was not really a beginning, middle or end to much started by either team.

Although both went into the game working on the theory that they still had a prize to chase -- Rovers the play-offs, Pompey safety from relegation -- they were both really on the road to nowhere as far as the current campaign is concerned. Maybe, just maybe, that got to Rovers after the defeat at Wolves the previous Saturday, leaving them with a sense of anti-climax.

Whatever it was, it made for grim watching as we hoped for so more from a side which lined up with three central midfielders and Damien Duff as the one real winger, a formation they have used before.

But, for me, Rovers did not seem to have the same balance they enjoy with two natural wide men in that quartet.

Still, the start promised much, with Burgess linking up well in the early minutes before Portsmouth's Ceri Hughes began to dominate the action.

Hughes, playing wide on the left, had a bizarre afternoon.

In the first 22 minutes, he was fortunate not to concede two own goals, from superb crosses by Dunn and Duff, picked up a yellow card and gave away a penalty!

After that, he grabbed a fine equaliser and almost inspired Portsmouth to a shock win. It said much about the kind of day it was.

Ashley Ward, who grafted unceasingly but can't get out of second gear at the moment, had the best chance when he scooped an instinctive volley wide before Rovers took the lead. Carsley burst into the penalty area, Hughes tripped him and the restored Rovers skipper blasted the spot kick high into the net with the keeper diving the wrong way -- maybe as much for self-preservation as anything else.

But then it started to go wrong and, when Hughes picked up the ball on the left, drifted inside and hit a clinical low shot, which skipped over the outstretched Kelly's arms, into the corner from more than 20 yards, Portsmouth were celebrating.

As far as quality was concerned, the second half went rapidly downhill.

Hughes stirred Rovers into life on the hour with a volley that was just too high and Flitcroft and Duff both had opportunities to restore Rovers' lead.

But they were off target and such chances were not to come again.

Despite a couple of substitutions, Rovers continued to struggle to piece things together and create anything. It was increasingly woeful.

They also had one or two scares of their own in the closing minutes before the final chance went as Carsley's fine ball found Dunn but he couldn't get an angled drive on target.

The fare was dire, the weather grew distinctly winter-like as the day wore on and even the fourth official's illuminated board conked out.

Somehow that said it all.