Chelsea fans will not have needed the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot to realise who dunn’it last night. It was Pompey - murdered by Guus Hiddink - in Griffin Park - with an attacking 4-4-2 system - and, quite frankly, it hardly mattered to the witnesses that the deceased hadn’t got a cluedo from beginning to end. What did matter was that a Portsmouth central defensive pairing of Younis Kaboul and Linvoy Primus were not allowed to get away with a murder of their own, as they no doubt would have done if we had gone at them with a blunt instrument otherwise known as the 4-1-4-1ill-fated formation.

Further evidence was stacked up against our new coach as early as the opening minutes of the game when it became clear that neither Liam Bridcutt or Mineiro would be cast in their usual role of immoveable holding midfielder, despite the fact that our own defence looked woefully short [height-wise] and neither of the wide players in the system were going to help out a great deal in that department. You WILL cope at the back seemed to be the clarion call - and cope they did while Quaresma and Stoch tormented the life out of the opposition on either flank. Add to this the incessantly clinical interplay between Franco Di Santo and Fabio Borini and you had an open and shut case against the Dutchman well before halftime.

There will be those who will say that this summation is unfair on others, specifically letting Paul Clement off a hook he would dearly like to be on, or at the very least be incriminated by, but I put it to you that, had a certain Luiz Felipe Scolari been around, neither Riccy Q nor Miroslav would have been anywhere near the scene of this brutal crime and only one central striker would have been in the frame. Indeed, I doubt that Mineiro would have crossed the halfway line nor had anything like the excellent game he actually had from the moment Michael Woods was lost to injury. No, at best, Paul can only claim to be an accomplice in this bloodbath and the ruthlessness running through the whole gory business smacks of one thing and one thing only. As the little Belgian might have said, ‘C‘est ca, Haisteengs, total football is as guilty as sin and, if we are not too careful, mon ami, it will soon become a crime of passion every week in SW6.’

I remember seeing images of this game on the official site. Its interesting to see Guus use the big boys in a reserve game, but I hope a team flanked by Riccy Q and Miro Stoch is a portend for the first teams future

Good read as always dorset, cheers