'It worked well': Portsmouth boss on why surprise system switch could stay after Oxford United trial

The Blues boss surprisingly lined-up with a 3-5-2 on Saturday, consisting of Mark O’Mahony and Elias Sorensen in attack, with Jordan Williams and Josh Murphy as wing-backs.

It represented a rare switch from Mousinho’s tried-and-trusted 4-3-2-1, which has served him so well during his time on the south coast, culminating in the 2023-24 League One title triumph.

The outcome was a vastly improved showing on the Stoke debacle, even though the Blues were disappointingly held to a 1-1 draw in a match they created enough opportunities to have won.

And Pompey’s head coach revealed he would consider retaining the 3-5-2 after watching it ‘work well’ against the U’s.

Mousinho told The News: ‘We played a 3-5-2 because we thought the best thing to get pressure on Oxford was to play with those two centre-forwards, giving us three of them on the pitch.

‘We wanted to get after them and wanted to put pressure on them out of possession, which we did very well. Also, when the ball went forward, one centre-forward was challenging for it and two others there to make sure we capitalised from that.

‘For the majority of my time here, we have played a 4-2-3-1 for 99 per cent of time, yet sometimes freshening things up after a loss is the right thing to do.

‘It gives the players something else to think about and takes their mind away from the loss at Stoke. I just thought for this game it was the right thing to do and I was really happy with that, that’s why we kept the formation for 90 minutes.

‘We had a Plan B, which would have been to drop Elias a bit wider and go back to a more conventional system that we’ve been playing. Jordan (Williams) we can drop in and Murphy goes a bit higher.

‘Systems are great, but on their own they don’t win you games of football, you need a huge amount more than that. I looked at the system after Stoke, to me the goals we conceded didn’t seem to be because of our formation or anything we were trying to do. We just made some really poor decisions and got opened up.

‘I thought everything worked well on Saturday and was pleased with it, albeit we didn’t score enough goals.’

The back three contained Regan Poole, Tom McIntyre and Connor Ogilvie, allowing Poole, in particular, the chance to use his ball-playing skills a little further forward as the right-sided centre-half.

Although, in terms of the wing-backs, it was a little lop-sided, with Williams operating more defensively than Murphy on the other flank, who was backed up by Ogilvie behind.

Mousinho added: ‘When we play a system like that, we want our outside centre-backs to get involved and to create overloads there, which we saw with Regan.

‘Maybe we weren’t quite as focused on possession and building out from the back as we have been recently, but I thought the whole thing went well.’