‘Lot stronger League One teams’: Portsmouth striker’s damning indictment of Preston North End and Plymouth Argyle after Championship step up
Kusini Yengi believes he’s not seen a significant step up in level after arriving in the Championship.
And the Pompey striker reckons he encountered far stronger opposition in League One, after taking on Preston North End and Plymouth Argyle before the international break.
The Aussie has delivered a surprise assessment of the second tier, with the Blues enduring a testing start to the campaign following a return to the level after a 12-year absence.
John Mousinho’s are one place off the bottom of the table with nearly a third of the season played, as they show signs of emerging from a massively testing opening to the campaign.
Yengi has yet to break his Championship duck after dealing with groin issues, which have restricted him to three league starts and eight appearances this term.
The 25-year-old’s starts have arrived in the past three games against Hull, Plymouth and Preston, coinciding with a sharp upturn in the level of performances from Mousinho’s side.
Yengi had praise for leaders Sunderland but not the past two teams Pompey encountered, with his view there were sterner tests last term as his side went up against the likes of Bolton, Derby and Peterborough.
Speaking while on international duty with Australia, Yengi said: ‘For me, honestly, I haven’t found much of a gap at all.
‘I wasn’t really involved too much at the start of the season, but the games I’ve played so far I haven’t found much of a difference.
‘The defenders are still a bit dirty off the ball and I don’t really get too many free-kicks in my favour.
‘It’s a similar kind of thing, but it’s different from team to team.
‘We played against Sunderland and I thought they had great quality in that game and it looked like it was a big jump from League One to the Championship.
‘But at the weekend we played Preston and Plymouth before and, to be honest, I played teams in League One who I thought were a lot stronger than them.’
Australia face two huge World Cup qualifiers in the coming days, as they take on Saudi Arabia in Melbourne tomorrow before travelling to take on Bahrain next Tuesday.
With just two points covering five teams in Group C there’s a lot at stake, but Yengi is expecting a less physical ride than he faces in England.
He added: ‘These games are always a bit different. The referees are a bit less lenient (to defenders) and you have the VAR, which we don’t have over there in the Championship and League One. So a lot happens off the ball which probably won’t happen in the games we have here.’