Blackpool boss pinpoints key to victory over 'proper team' Portsmouth

The Blues’ recent troubles continued as they slipped to a fourth loss in seven games.

The home side lacked any sort of attacking spark throughout the League One contest.

And they were made to pay when Jerry Yates’ 82nd-minute finish ensured the Seasiders returned to Bloomfield Road with all three points.

Critchley was proud of how Blackpool nullified Pompey’s goal threat. The only real chance the Blues had on goal fell to Rasmus Nicolaisen in the first half but his effort was blocked on the line by James Husband.

And the Pool head coach reckons his troops thoroughly deserved their win.

He told the Blackpool Gazette: ‘I’m really proud of the team’s performance.

‘You know coming to Portsmouth you’re going to come up against a proper team and anything that you get is going to be well-earned and I thought it was a well-earned victory.

‘We limited them to very little, maybe they just had that one incident in the first half, but other than that Maxi (Chris Maxwell) has had nothing to do.

'The longer the game went on and the more the game opened up, I thought we looked the most likely to score, even though there weren’t many chances at either end.

‘But a moment of quality has won it for us.

‘We don’t come here settling for a point, we want to go and try and win the game and be positive. We believe in ourselves and today we’ve got the rewards for that.

‘I didn’t feel in any danger after we scored. They obviously started to hit a few more longer balls and began to commit more bodies forward.

‘But we stood up to that extremely well. We stayed out of the penalty box, we didn’t drop deep and we protected Maxi really well.

‘As a team I couldn’t have been happier with our defensive display.’