Preston North End 2-1 Pompey: John Mousinho's post-match reaction

The News, Portsmouth

Pompey boss John Mousinho reflects on the Blues' Championship defeat at Deepdale.

Transcript

00:00I'm absolutely furious. I can't believe what we did after getting the equaliser.

00:05Unacceptable on so many levels. I think I've been far too nice, far too kind to this team for far too long.

00:11That was absolutely awful what we did after working so hard to get back in the game.

00:15You just played switching off, what annoyed you in particular?

00:18If you look at the build-up to the goal, they should have scored before that.

00:24We keep getting the press wrong, leaving our man, doing some of the world's silliest things.

00:30And when you watch the goal back, Greenwood has the ball in the halfway line, we've got four of our players around him.

00:36I constantly, constantly, constantly go on about fouling early, giving ourselves a chance to get back in it.

00:41But no, we decide we think we can do better and we think we can do something else.

00:44Ball ends up in the back of the net. Same old message, same old message and it's not good enough.

00:48What was your take on the first half? Because really you probably had the vast majority of the play there.

00:52Yes, I thought we were really good. It was a really good away performance without being spectacular.

00:56We put ourselves in some really good positions in the final third and we didn't quite take advantage of those things.

01:01I was actually comfortable in the second half as well. I know Preston made the four changes.

01:04But once again, we shot ourselves in the foot.

01:06And when you did go behind, Colby Bishop popped up with a leveller for you.

01:09Yes, and that was great. So, good reaction to going behind, awful reaction to getting the equaliser.

01:13What was your thinking behind the selection today, making those three changes?

01:17Well, it hasn't really been working for us away from home, doing the same things we've been doing.

01:21We wanted to get a bit more athleticism on the pitch, which we did. And yes, I thought it worked really well.

01:27How frustrated are you with a week like this, the start of the league's game and then the lines like this?

01:32You can probably tell incredibly frustrated, incredibly angry again.

01:36We've got this horrible habit of seemingly needing much more pressure sometimes than league table pressure.

01:43And yes, that's probably a reflection of the group.

01:47If you're a good team and if you want to make it at this level, if you want to take it to the next level,

01:54you have to sort of manufacture that pressure yourself and make sure that we play with the intensity we played with then.

02:02And maybe our back's to the wall and we're looking at a smaller gap at the bottom of the league as soon as we open up a 10-point gap.

02:06I can live with certain bits from the other night. I just can't live with what we've seen tonight.

02:13It's like it's a bit of a microcosm vehicle. As we get back in it, we take a 10-point gap in relegation and just switch off.

02:21We just switch off and we do things that we explicitly tell the players not to do.

02:26What have you said to the players?

02:28All of that in a different way.

02:32What does that mean for you?

02:37Well, it's going to be miserable and that's the way it should be.

02:42It just is. I'd love to be more positive about it.

02:45But I think we've got to take a bit of a tougher line and we've got to be a bit harsher because the message just isn't sinking in.

02:52So we're going to have to come back in two weeks' time against Blackburn and really be at it.

02:56Hard work, anything that can sort this out?

03:00I don't think there's lacking in hard work today.

03:02I think we're working incredibly hard.

03:04Just the message isn't filtering in for certain players.

03:07And unfortunately, the players could turn around and go, look, I played really well for 89 minutes, which most of them did.

03:15So most of the players out there played really well for 89 minutes.

03:18Unfortunately, if you want to play well for 89 minutes, you find yourself back in League One as a player, as a club, everything.

03:22If you want to play well for 90, 95 minutes, you give yourself half a chance.

03:25So it's just not good enough.

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