A lack of Championship pedigree and experience: Portsmouth boss’ admission as he responds to doubts

And the Blues boss dismissed the notion age was a factor in the naivety behind their Stoke City embarrassment, as they aim to put their Potteries nightmare right against Oxford United tomorrow.

Mousinho has branded the clash with the U’s a must-win game, after the 6-1 thrashing at the bet365 Stadium made it the worst winless start to a league season since the war.

That has put the eye on the squad’s credentials, with one area under the spotlight the lack of Pompey players who’ve played in the Championship before.

Of the starting XI on Wednesday night, Will Norris, Josh Murphy, Tom McIntyre and Marlon Pack had second-tier experience under their belt before this season.

Of the rest of the squad, Jordan Williams, Conor Shaughnessy, Sammy Sivera, Andre Dozzell, Matt Ritchie and Callum Lang fall into that category.

Mousinho acknowledged there’s not a huge amount of games at the level among the group, but feels those stepping up simply have to show they are capable of doing so.

He said: ‘We don’t have a huge amount of Championship experience, that’s just a fact.

‘Marlon has played there, Josh has played there, Tom McIntyre and Will a little bit (from Wednesday’s starting line-up).

‘But that’s something you have to deal with. When you play in League One and get promoted to the Championship there’s two ways to go about it.

‘You can say this is the level for me and I deserve to be here, or you can say someone with more Championship experience is going to take my place because I’m not good enough.

‘I expect more from the lads, the lads have earned the right to play at this level and have to be a lot better to show that.

‘The sad thing about the Stoke game was they’ve done that for the majority of the season, so that’s something we have to put right.’

When it comes to experience in terms of age, Mousinho is dismissive of that being a factor for Pompey at present - given the make-up of his squad at Stoke.

He added: ‘If I look at the team which played against Stoke, we had a 30-year-old keeper who’s played in the Premier League. We had players who are 27, 26, 26 and 24 across the back four.

‘There was a 34-year-old captain in the middle of the park, Murph is 29 and then there’s youth around that.

‘So I don’t look at the side and think we are a bunch of kids who I can give an excuse to for making the decisions we made.

‘If we look at the individuals who made the errors, some of the naive errors didn’t come from the 19-year-old, 20 and 21-year-olds who made them. I’m not saying the performance of the youngsters was brilliant, but you look at those and you can forgive some of those things.

‘When I look at nous and experience I think we have plenty of that in the side, so can’t just say we’re playing kids and that’s the excuse.

‘Yes, we have some youngsters but I don’t think that’s an excuse.’