Pompey boss John Mousinho's Bristol Rovers verdict

The News, Portsmouth

Pompey boss John Mousinho gives his reaction to the 1-1 draw with Bristol Rovers at Fratton Park today.

Transcript

00:00 John, one-all today against Brussels Rovers, left it late of course, how did you see that match?

00:05 Yeah, I thought it was about right in terms of the result. I've had a couple of stats quoted there in terms of our shots and possession,

00:12 but ultimately it's meaningless. We need more shots on target and we need more to go into the back of the net.

00:17 And we desperately need to, well, not desperately, we definitely need to work on that.

00:21 We got into some really good areas today and didn't quite take advantage of it,

00:25 particularly with our crossing, I thought was quite poor, ironically the goal actually came from probably our best cross of the game

00:32 and just arriving at the back post, which goes to show if you do get it right we can have success from that.

00:36 So I thought a fair result, I thought Brussels Rovers were a good side and they set up well.

00:41 They were difficult to play against, but yeah, we'll be disappointed to come away with that with the point,

00:46 but there's a huge amount to learn.

00:47 Did you think it might be beyond you as it got into sloppish time there?

00:50 It felt like we had so much momentum coming out in the second half and Christian made a huge difference with the way that he played.

00:57 And then for 15 minutes I thought we were really on top of the game, just sort of ebbed away after that.

01:01 We had sort of spells of possession and spells of pressure on the goal here at the Fraternum,

01:06 but it just felt like it might be one of those days where we hit the post I think a couple of times

01:14 and there's a couple of penalty shouts and the thing really goes our way.

01:18 But yeah, the lads kept at it and the reason we made the substitutions to try and get the three centre-forwards on the pitch

01:22 was to be as attacking as possible and thankfully it paid off.

01:25 You mentioned Christian, what an impact he made.

01:27 I thought he was excellent, he was my man of the match I thought.

01:30 And straight away you could see he linked well with Colby, very, very difficult to get the ball off him.

01:39 And a lot of what we've probably seen in pre-season with Christian, we've been really positive about him

01:44 and just tweaking that shape in the second half made a huge difference I thought.

01:48 And yeah, Christian was excellent, the only thing missing from the game is Colby again.

01:51 Was it difficult to take off Tom at half-time?

01:54 Tom had a little knee injury so his knee started to swell up so he had a bit of fluid on it.

01:59 Tom wanted to carry on, it was difficult because I thought Tom was probably our best player in the first half

02:05 and he tried to affect the game running beyond, but ultimately when we were thinking about making the change anyway

02:13 we wanted to protect Tom and make sure it doesn't get any worse.

02:16 So yeah, difficult in terms of Tom's performance, it was nothing to do with the way he played.

02:20 How is he now though?

02:22 He's okay, I think he's a bit of a strange one, he's not entirely sure why it swelled up

02:25 but we'll assess that tomorrow, I think with the knees it's a difficult one, we'll see how it is.

02:30 Because Christian gave you a completely different performance as well didn't he?

02:33 Yeah, he did and it sort of changed the dynamic of the way we went about it,

02:37 particularly because in the first half we felt we were getting a lot of joy from hitting Colby on the diags.

02:42 But we didn't really have anyone close enough to him and then all of a sudden in the second half

02:46 hitting him and getting those knockdowns, we were right at it and Christian being closer to him really helped us.

02:52 We've always wanted to have that option, we knew that Christian would be able to do that

02:55 and he's taken his chance today and he's played brilliantly.

02:58 It's only his first game, let's not forget it goes 45 minutes, what are you expecting this evening from Christian Sader?

03:04 Really good question, I think we're expecting him to impact games, there's no target in terms of goals,

03:12 what we want him to do is keep his work rate up.

03:15 Christian's had a lot of work to do pre-season to get himself fit and he's done that really well.

03:20 He can sprint and sprint and run again and it's very difficult to get the ball off,

03:24 so we want him to be that presence up front.

03:27 Probably the main thing is to keep adding chance creation and goal creation ultimately to his game.

03:34 I think if he can do that then he's very close to being the sort of player that we desperately need in the fold.

03:40 You said the fans took to him straight away too, didn't they?

03:43 I'm not surprised just the way that he plays and I know we've spoken about it all pre-season with the boys,

03:49 the fans want to see passion, they want to see effort, they want to see people that are willing to put their bodies on the line

03:54 and if we can add a bit of quality around that, that would be great.

03:57 That's probably the one thing that was lacking today because I don't think work rate was lacking,

04:00 just a bit of quality and some decision making, but Christian brings that in in droves.

04:04 He really lifted the frat and end and I'm very pleased that he wasn't on the losing side.

04:08 So when you score at the last minute, you can watch it at home, is that a point gained or are you disappointed not to get three points?

04:13 We're disappointed not to take three points because of the fact that we didn't feel it was a game

04:17 and on reflection I didn't feel it was a game that we couldn't have won.

04:21 I thought we made some really poor decisions, especially in the first half.

04:24 The goal was error after error after error, we compounded, we gave the ball away twice, we let a runner run off us.

04:30 We're always going to make mistakes, we're always going to give the ball away,

04:33 but the key is to try and not compound an error with an error and that's what we did and that was really disappointing.

04:38 So yeah, I think ultimately we'll see it as two points dropped, but five minutes before the end of the game,

04:45 if you'd offered me the point I would have taken it.

04:47 In terms of recruitment, you say you want one more player in the design, how's that going to go?

04:51 Yeah, in terms of what we've been doing as a coaching staff, that hasn't been our main focus over the past couple of days,

04:58 so we'll catch up with Rich after and see where we are with that, but I think we're pretty close.

05:01 So you're hoping for the weekend?

05:03 I'm hoping for the weekend, early next week for something to be announced hopefully,

05:07 but yeah, don't hold us to that, but we are working hard.

05:10 Thank you, cheers.

05:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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