Portsmouth boss’ message to Bolton Wanderers and Derby County as play-off charge reignites

And the Pompey boss believes his men now need to embrace the pressure, as hopes grow of a late-season charge into the top six.

The 1-0 win over Forest Green saw the Blues close the gap to three points on Bolton and Peterborough, in fifth and sixth place respectively.

That’s a huge turnaround from the 13-point difference, when Pompey dropped to 15th in the table with Ian Evatt’s side fifth after the 3-0 defeat in January.

Mousinho celebrated that fact with the season reigniting with seven games left.

He said: ‘It’s brilliant (to be asking questions of the sides above them).

‘We knew if we won it we’d go within three points of Bolton, because they don’t play this weekend.

‘That, for us, whatever happens this season represented a positive step from where we were in January when we played them up at their place.

‘The gap was a lot bigger then, so that was a big incentive for us.

‘We didn’t know how the other results would go, but that’s great and a real positive.

‘We had to focus on what we did today and we have to do the same next weekend, box off the MK game before we look at anything else.

‘We want to keep doing that, for as long as we can for the rest of the season.’

The Forest Green success makes it nine wins and three draws from 16 games, since Mousinho became Pompey boss in January.

He senses expectations building among fans - and is happy about that fact.

Mousinho added: ‘We should also crank the pressure on ourselves a bit.

‘I know the expectation is building and I think it should do.

‘If you’d spoken about this back in January people could’ve said: “I don’t know how you’re actually going to get there”.

‘The lads have done that, they’ve done that themselves in terms of their performance and probably more importantly results.

‘They’ve ground out some really good results over the last few weeks, when there’s been really difficult circumstances.

‘They’ve managed to do it. Even last week we kept ourselves in the hunt with a scrappy point, when we didn’t play particularly well in the first half.

‘This time we played really well for 51 minutes, then needed to scrap it out.’