Pompey boss John Mousinho speaks to The News after the shambolic Stoke City defeat.
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00:00Right now, the game went away from us very, very quickly, five minutes before half-time
00:05and then five minutes after half-time, he sent this mad 10-minute spell, but my overall
00:11thoughts on the game were that we started abysmally. The first 10 minutes, I don't know
00:16what we were thinking. We thought we were going to come here and play in some sort of
00:23way that was just completely foreign to a decent away performance. We gave ourselves
00:27a manner to climb going a goal down, which we deserved to go a goal down. I said to John
00:31it was very, very similar to the Leeds game. I thought it was probably the best thing that
00:34could have happened to us because we decided then we weren't going to be idiotic about
00:38the way we went about the game. We got back into the game, deserved to get back into the
00:41game and then things were fairly even, I think, up until about the 40th minute. The two goals
00:45we conceded before half-time are just abysmal. They're just abysmal. And then in the second
00:51half, Stoke killed the game off very early and I think the biggest positive is it finished
00:566-6.
00:57You've been competing in games every game this season and last season as well, so how
01:01much has that hurt you that they weren't competing today?
01:04Yes, it didn't look like a side that I recognised. It was a side that didn't compete. We ran,
01:10we didn't win challenges, we didn't win headers. There's so many examples I was looking at
01:16from the sidelines where we'd come out of challenges having lost it. We sent it forward,
01:22we'd flick the ball up in the air and win this only second ball. They just ran more
01:25than us. That sort of level of performance is unacceptable. So, take on board anything
01:33that goes wrong technically, tactically. Obviously, the side that we set up as a coaching staff
01:39and I set up and I picked was wrong. I'm not quite sure how we'll dissect that, but there's
01:44a lot of aspects of the game that we can't accept.
01:47How much do you think you're going to learn about your players in times like this as well?
01:51We'll see on Saturday, I think. We've learned a huge amount tonight about a lot of players
01:55and we'll see again on Saturday how they bounce back.
01:57No foul in the squad today, was that just a selection or was he unavailable?
02:01He's unavailable. He slipped in training yesterday and we don't know the extent of it, but he's
02:06just another one of those that's piled up at the moment.
02:08I suppose, if you think of a positive, the one is the Omani goal. So, good for him to
02:12get on the score sheet at least to make it 1-1.
02:14Yes, I mean, we could try and talk about positives tonight though, but I don't think there are
02:17many. So, I think it's best to just dust ourselves off and go again on Saturday.
02:21Supporters didn't stop singing and they were there clapping you. How much does that mean to you?
02:26It means a huge amount. They didn't deserve that tonight. Apologies on my behalf for them
02:32having to come all the way up to see that and pay their money and see that. It's not
02:35on, it's not acceptable and we'll take that fully on board.
02:38What type of journey has that going to be now for you as well?
02:42Yes, it's not going to be nice. I don't know, it's a strange feeling because the game's
02:50gone after Stoke get their sixth. So, the sort of feelings that you have when you can
02:58see the last-minute equaliser or the last-minute goal that we did at Burnley, they're very,
03:04very different to what we have now. I think we have to be very, very practical about the
03:08assessment of the game as we go home. Yes, it's not going to be nice at all but we have
03:13to be very, very quick in terms of rebounding on Saturday. We've just got a huge game that
03:17we need to win.
03:18That is my signal, isn't it? Less than 72 hours, just how crucial now to get this response
03:22on Saturday.
03:23Yes, it's crucial and we have to win the game. There's no two ways about that. We have to
03:25win the game and we can't see what we saw out there today. It's impossible.