John Mousinho gave Pompey a warning, saying they must improve their performances right immediately to keep their season from losing steam.
Additionally, the Blues manager apologised for not applying more pressure to their opponents and allowing them to reduce their League One advantage over the Christmas break.
Nevertheless, Mousinho is certain that his squad, who leads League One going into 2024, is still in a great position.
Not working properly With a goalless draw at Exeter to cap up the season, Pompey managed just two points out of nine during the holiday break.
Due to this, a seven-point lead has shrunk to two points, and Mousinho’s team still has a game left against Bolton in second position.
The head coach is aware that problems need to be resolved in order to reverse the three-game league run of failure.
You can live with the results, but we need to address the performances, he remarked.
“I can accept the outcome at Bristol Rovers because I believed we were deserving of the victory.” Both this game and the first half for Fleetwood are opportunities that are slipping away from us.
“After these first 24 games, we’ve put ourselves in a fantastic position—we have 50 points.”Although we lead the league, there is a hint of remorse that we haven’t adequately tightened the screw and increased the lead during the last three games.
I’m not putting more pressure on the boys than is reasonable or beyond their capacity. I’m not requesting anything from them that we wouldn’t expect from them, nor should the supporters have any expectations from us as a football team. We don’t expect them to easily defeat every team, say, 4-0 or 5-0. All we want is that they follow the fundamentals and don’t waste these chances the way we did in the first half.
It isn’t highly technical. All we ask is that they maintain their composure and offer themselves the best opportunity to succeed this year.
Mousinho is aware that not every aspect of the last three games has let him down, but rather certain parts of them, especially the opening halves against Fleetwood and Exeter. He believed Pompey was far from the team they had proven to be in both of their previous outings this season.
Mousinho went on, “I can always forgive a draw if we played with enough vigour and determination, but I don’t think we did that.” We squandered forty-five minutes against a team that had gained momentum from their previous victory, making it difficult to come.
“I thought we played a decent first fifteen minutes of the game, but after that, we played a really bad first half.” It was peculiar. We usually have to start again at halftime if we don’t start a game well, but we got off to a decent start, though I didn’t see any teams I could fully identify in the first half.
