Pompey head coach John Mousinho talks to The News after the Blues' goalless draw against Cheltenham at Fratton Park
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00:00 John, I imagine a very frustrating afternoon for yourself?
00:04 Yeah, really frustrating I think. To come away here with all the positivity after Tuesday night and to not manage to win the game, I think under the circumstances, i.e. just completely dominating the game in every aspect apart from probably in the final third, we are frustrated but ultimately I don't think we've been creative enough to be sitting in there thinking too sorry for ourselves, we've got to really do much better at that.
00:26 Yeah, because it's not like you missed loads of chances or created loads of chances there?
00:30 Yeah, we definitely had the better of the chances as well as general play but like I said, not enough to sit there and think we really should have won the game. We feel overall we should have won the game but we didn't necessarily think we deserved to win it based on what we created and that's the disappointing thing.
00:47 It was the first time I think this season, even the tight game the other night I thought we did create enough. I thought Bristol Rovers was probably one of our more dominant performances although we drew the game and there was a lot of positivity after that.
00:58 Today, just not so much, very, very difficult to play against a system like that, don't get me wrong, really difficult to play against that but Bristol's got enough of a team there to unlock defences.
01:08 Why do you think it's so difficult to play against a system like that?
01:12 I think it's exactly that, it's really tough to break sides down when you go into that back five and the two in front works incredibly hard, the three centre forwards didn't like dropping in.
01:20 We had a bit of a shoot from Mark with the centre halves and Joe Maran, Marlon Pack but every time we played the ball wide I thought we were probably a bit too slow in terms of the way we switched the ball.
01:32 There's a real difference between being patient with the ball and slowing the game down too much. We probably just slowed the game down a bit too much and we didn't move it quick enough and ultimately you need to shift sides, team side to side to create gaps.
01:47 Then when we did get the opportunity to put the ball in the box I don't think it was with enough quality and we didn't have enough bodies in the box either.
01:52 You made it to the substitution, did you worry captain Koff as well as trying to find a way through?
01:57 We wanted to be positive, it was a really weird one today because we were trying to calculate how much time we had left in the game.
02:03 We changed both the wide men to try and provide a bit of fresh legs because I think they've had a good physical go over the last couple of weeks.
02:14 We thought the best thing to do was at that point to change the wide men to be absolutely excellent from the start of the season.
02:25 We didn't necessarily think that the three games of the week would be particularly good, I'm sure he'd disagree with me but we also thought the stoppage wouldn't be the best thing.
02:36 If I'd have stopped and tried to go again then it's one of those things where you just want to make sure you protect him.
02:42 Again, a late cameo from Paddy to see if we could just chuck him on the pitch and see what we could get from him.
02:49 I think we can learn that we think we've got enough in the dressing room to be able to connect with the rest of the team.
02:58 We need a bit of work obviously, I think the message to the lads in the dressing room is that it's a collective, it's staff, it's players, everyone needs to be better.
03:08 We need to work with the team and the team has to do in order to break sides down and be faced like this.
03:14 It's going to happen, we spoke about this extensively back in the last season.
03:18 I guess the only pleasing thing from today is we didn't look like conceding at any point, especially in the second half when we didn't look like getting countered.
03:26 The one that sticks out in my mind is Morcombe at home where they should have scored a flat and end towards the back of the last year.
03:31 If you take that as a positive thing, then fine. But yeah, we've just got work to do I think.
03:37 There's plenty to come from the players in there, that's the positive thing.
03:41 I don't think we're getting the maximum out of the players that we've got.
03:44 We know we've got good attacking players in that can really contribute scoring-wise so we need to make sure they do but we're not operating at our max.
03:53 What's the latest of Cassini and Young?
03:55 Unfortunately, Cassini picked up an injury in training on Thursday. He fell awkwardly and a player landed on top of him.
04:02 The initial thought was that it was a fracture so we protected him in the boot and he limped off for an X-ray and an MRI.
04:09 So that was Thursday afternoon and we got the results back yesterday.
04:14 It's much better than we thought so it's 68 weeks with ankle ligament damage.
04:17 Still a real blow to everything we've been trying to build over the last few weeks but I think the main message is we're not too displeased because it could have been much worse.
04:26 So a player fell on him, a complete freak incident?
04:29 Just a freak incident, yeah. One of those things.
04:31 I know there's a couple of rumours circulating that it was something to do with the training pitch and the rain but all nonsense.
04:36 It was Thursday. I think we pressurised the test to that because I think they were there, they saw him limp off and thankfully did us a favour by not releasing it.
04:44 So we didn't give Chelman too many ideas about what we were going to do.
04:47 But yeah, just one of those things. Nothing we can really do.
04:50 Who was it that fell on him?
04:52 I don't want to say that, it'll get lynched!
04:54 But you said it was worse than the eight weeks?
04:58 We thought it would be, yeah. If it was a fracture we could have been looking to 14 to 16 weeks and obviously that's what we were trying to protect again.
05:09 So it could have been much worse, yeah.
05:11 And there's a six to eight weeks out?
05:13 Yeah, there's going to be six to eight weeks.
05:15 Cass came back quickly from his minor ankle injury in pre-season so we know he's a fit, strong lad that rehabs really well and hopefully he'll do that this time.
05:22 Thank you, cheers.