Boss criticises Pompey defence after defeat

Pompey suffered a 3-1 defeat at Southend this afternoon.

The Blues were two goals behind after only 12 minutes at Roots Hall - and never recovered as their awful 2018 continues.

Nathan Thompson was handed a red card on 64 minutes, while Gareth Evans and Brett Pitman were both substituted with suspected hamstring problems to deepen the gloom.

And afterwards, Jackett didn’t hold back in his criticism over Pompey’s current defensive performances.

He said: ‘We were poor defensively, we didn’t do enough, I thought we were too deep on a regular basis and didn’t win enough headers.

‘We didn’t work hard enough to block crosses coming into our box, both of their full-backs had a very good day in terms of their service.

‘It’s a high run of games where we haven’t had a clean sheet, too many goals against and that is the basis of everything good teams do.

‘The goals against column have to be zeros and ones - then you can start to build some confidence and earn some points.

‘As a side we are giving soft goals away, it doesn’t seem too hard to score against us and it has to improve.’