Delighted Portsmouth boss hails 'decent weekend' as Blues capitalise on rivals Derby and Bolton's slip ups

John Mousinho hailed a ‘decent weekend’ as a Pompey point took on extra importance.

The Blues were held to a goalless draw at Charlton following a testing second half in which they had to dig deep.

Meanwhile, Derby lost 2-1 at Barnsley and 10-man Bolton suffered a 4-1 defeat against Blackpool as they slipped up in their ongoing pursuit of the long-time league leaders.

Those results ensured Pompey extended their advantage to seven points at the top of League One with 11 matches to play.

As a consequence, Mousinho admitted a goalless draw at struggling Charlton was an even better outcome.

The Blues’ head coach told The News: ‘I felt it was a well-earned point for both sides, a bit end-to-end, a bit frantic in the second half, and there were a couple of chances, particularly from set-pieces and goalmouth scrambles, for both sides.

‘Charlton hit the post early on and, once we sorted ourselves out and realised how to deal with their threat, I thought we became a bit of a better side.

‘The quality probably wasn’t there throughout from ourselves, we were a bit too direct, but Charlton pressed really well and had a load of energy and good players. I think they’ll cause plenty of sides problems here.

‘The point looks even better with results elsewhere. Obviously there’s nothing we could have done about those, but it comes to that time of the season where, as soon as you come into the changing room, we look at how those other results have gone.

‘First of all we had to make sure we didn't lose the game, which was really important. Whether from a throw-in, switching off or a set-piece or whatever, I’ve been in that situation loads of times as a player where you come away from home and put in all that graft and manage to lose.

‘I was really pleased with the fact we didn’t do that, we looked like we were a threatening side towards the back end, and, with the other results, it has been a decent weekend.’

Substitute Myles Peart-Harris had the opportunity to win the game late on for the Blues, when put clean through for a one-on-one.

However, a stunning last-ditch tackle from Macaulay Gillesphey denied the attacker and a golden chance went begging.

Mousinho added: ‘To come away from home, clean sheet, 0-0, you take the point and move into next week.

‘We probably had the best chance of the game with Myles getting through one-on-one and just taking a bit too much time with the finish.

‘But, overall, a pretty fair result.’