Cook slams Pompey '˜arrogance'

The League Two leaders tonight ran out comfortable 3-1 winners as the Blues’ hopes of closing down the top three faltered.

It had been 1-1 at the break after Kal Naismith had cancelled out John Marquis’ opener following an awful opening to the game for the visitors.

Then a dreadful second half in which ex-Pompey loanee Marquis added his second of the game and Tommy Rowe also netted condemned the Blues to defeat.

And Cook was fuming with his team after falling flat in front of the television cameras.

He said: ‘I’m really disappointed in the players and the performance in general.

‘You come to a ground like this and you know we are going to have spells where we control the game. I have great belief in the team, but to start the game the way we did was embarrassing.

‘All the games we work on trying to be aggressive and have penetration - but we just didn’t start. After 10 minutes we are 1-0 down, yet I thought the players were excellent for the rest of the half.

‘We thoroughly deserved the equaliser and expected us to go on and win the game and unfortunately gave two sloppy goals away to end up losing the game.

‘I am absolutely fuming. If you don’t respect the opposition you will be beaten at any level of football and we have an arrogance about us at times.

‘Arrogance comes off the back of how good you are and what you do. You can’t have arrogance without achieving success and at the moment we have a little bit of that in us.’