Portsmouth boss on the secret behind Northern Ireland international's surprise goal-scoring transformation

John Mousinho has revealed the secret behind the remarkable transformation of Paddy Lane into a goal-scoring machine.

The Northern Ireland international bagged his 10th of the campaign for the League One leaders with a second-half winner at Carlisle.

It was a sweetly-struck finish which reflected the growing confidence in front of goal for the 22-year-old, who is flourishing at Fratton Park.

It took him until his 15th Pompey outing last season before opening his account in the final match against Wycombe in May.

Since then, Lane has rattled in 10 in 29 league appearances - and Mousinho’s knows the reasons why.

He told The News: ‘Paddy has done a huge amount of work on himself. The two things you need to do to score goals is firstly put yourself into the position - and the second is to put it into the back of the net.

‘The biggest thing for us is making sure that, as the ball broke down in the middle of the park, Paddy got on his bike and put himself into a position where he could score.

‘His finishing has been remarkably better than it was last season and we still think he can improve.

‘To get into double figures this early into the season for a player who scored ajust one league goal last year., is excellent. That’s why we brought Paddy in and that’s why we want to keep pushing him on.

‘On Wednesday, when we trained in the last full training session, he spent 20-25 minutes out there doing various finishes, some from the right, some from the left.

‘I don’t think anything perfectly falls for you, but if you’ve got that composure then you know you’re going to have confidence putting the ball into the back of the net - and inevitably you do.

‘Extra training is a real trait of the squad, a lot of the time we have to drag the lads back in because they’re doing a bit too much, but that’s what we want. There's nobody in the history of sport that has ever gone anywhere by not practising.

‘Paddy’s become better at finishing, he puts himself into much better positions and is a bit more positive - and the demand on him is to keep going.’

Last term, wingers Lane, Owen Dale and Michael Jacobs scored eight goals before them.

Now Lane has already surpassed that tally by himself - and with 14 matches remaining it could well increase further.

Mousinho added: ‘We’ve got goals out wide with Abu Kamara, Paddy, and Callum Lang, who is playing as a 10 and sometimes popped out wide.

‘Goals from anywhere was a big area we wanted to improve upon from last year and if you can nick goals like Saturday then you come away with a 1-0 win.’