‘It’s not about me’: Under-pressure Cheltenham boss and Southampton fan on Portsmouth thrashing

The Southampton fan endured a torrid afternoon as his team were thumped 4-0 at Fratton Park on Saturday.

The Robins were three goals down after 26 minutes, as they felt the full force of a rampant attacking display from the Biues.

It means eyes are on Elliott with his team two points outside of the League One drop zone.

But the former Bournemouth and Burnley man feels the focus should be on the job at hand rather than the players letting him down.

Elliott told Gloucester Live: ‘It's not about me.

‘They didn't necessarily let me down. I said to them before the game, we have 15 games left to play and there is a certain amount of points we need to hit.

‘If we don't, whatever their individual aspirations are, hit that number of points they'll be worse off for it.

‘Whether they want to stay, whether they want to move, whether they want another loan move. ‘We wasted a half of football, which in our situation we obviously can't afford to do. I don't know if it's a case of letting me down.

‘That's a difficult question to answer (if they let the fans down) because not for one second do I think they don't go out to perform, or not give their best.

‘If they ever did that, or I ever thought for a second they'd done that, I'd say they've let the fans down. I don't think they've done that. We've performed really badly.’

Plenty thought the Cheltenham display owed much to a hangover after their penalty shootout defeat to Plymouth in the Papa John’s Trophy semi-final on Tuesday night.

Elliott wasn’t prepared to use that disappointment as an excuse, however.

He added: 'We'll have to pick the bones out of it and look at where's come from because it's two games in a row now where we've been behind early.

'It's obviously raw at the minute, so I can't say I know exactly why it's happened, but we're going to have to take some flack aren't we. If we're going to take all the plaudits in the week for how solid we are and how well we played, we're going to have to be big enough to take some flack off the back of today.'