James admits Pompey were lucky February 18 2008
Portsmouth's penalty hero David James admits that the club were fortunate to knock a valiant Preston out of the FA Cup on Sunday.
The Championship club dominated large portions of the second half and missed the best opportunity of the game when the England goalkeeper saved Simon Whaley's spot-kick after Sylvain Distin had fouled Billy Jones.
Pompey then stole a narrow 1-0 victory in the third minute of injury time when Darren Carter smashed the ball into his own net after Niko Kranjcar's corner caused chaos in the Preston box.
James told Sky Sports: "I thought we'd be lucky to get an opportunity to have another game but the cup's about winning and however you do it, last minute, that's what counts."
The 37-year-old produced a number of inspired stops, including a flying save to deny Neil Mellor.
Of the save James said: "It was nice. "It was instinctive. I know Neil a little bit from Liverpool days, I wasn't trying to second guess him but it was good.
"The game was tough. They had possibly the better side, but saying that their keeper's made some great saves himself so it's not like we were completely out of it."
Harry Redknapp explained that the south coast club would have been happy to accept a draw before Carter's own-goal.
"To be honest at that stage of the game I was looking for the whistle," he told Sky Sports.
"I was thinking let's get them back to Fratton Park and have a replay, because they've played ever so well.
"They put in a real good performance. They didn't deserve to lose, but that's football.
"It was a good performance by Preston. If they played like that every week they wouldn't be in a relegation battle."
And the 60-year was quick to praise his goalkeeper: "David James is different class and the lad taking the penalty must have stepped up and realised how imposing he is.
"If anyone can make a save it's going to be him because he's that good.
"In the last couple of weeks he's been in great form but he's been like that since he came to the club.
"He's been on another level - absolutely fantastic - and hopefully he can continue in that vein." Yet again, James excelled throughout to further enhance his claims to remain as England's number one goalkeeper for the foreseeable future.
The former Liverpool shot-stopper has been restored in a Three Lions shirt since the arrival of Fabio Capello and has subsequently fixed his sights on being England's first-choice goalkeeper at the next World Cup.
James will be pushing 40 when the finals in South Africa come around in 2010, but he has rarely enjoyed better form than at present.
"He's such a perfectionist and will be around for a long time yet," added Redknapp.
"He's a great trainer and it's not a problem for him.
"He works non-stop on the training ground and he studies videos of his performances every afternoon.
"He's absolutely dedicated and he's in such great condition."
Preston boss Alan Irvine refused to point the finger at Whaley for missing the penalty.
The former Everton assistant said: "The first thing he did when he came into the dressing room was apologise.
"But I said he had need to apologise because people miss penalties.
"It's good that he feels that way but we're certainly not going to start pointing the finger.
"We've got some very important games coming up and we're not going to make him feel any worse than he already feels at the moment."
Attention at Deepdale now switches back to avoiding relegation to League One.
Irvine said: "To play as well as we did has got to give the players a lot of confidence.
"If we can take that second-half performance into the remaining 14 games then we'll be okay."