Portsmouth boss’ plan for exciting, young defensive partnership after Derby County test

And the Pompey boss reserved praise for his young centre-back pairing, after emerging from a serious test of their credentials at Pride Park.

Mousinho opted to continue with Ryley Towler and Di’Shon Bernard against the play-off chasers, after they started in the win over Accrington.

Towler has made a big impression since arriving from Bristol City in January, while Di’Shon Bernard is a wanted man after spending the second half of the campaign on loan from Manchester United.

The pair came through a testing opening on Saturday to emerge with credit, in the sort of demanding environment Mousinsho wants then to play in more often.

He said: ‘We want to see them, we want to see them exposed to these sort of situations and see how the cope.

‘It wasn’t just them, but we didn’t cope particularly well early on, but then they did and they grew into the game.

‘Those physical challenges at League One level are going to be really important to them, we know what they look like. The top sides like Sheffield Wednesday have Michael Smith up top and Plymouth have Ryan Hardie and Sam Cosgrove - big, physical threats who can run.

‘I did say to the lads it’s not like my day when you sat in and got the midfielder to do your job. We want to be aggressive and front-footed, these two have shown real promise doing that.’

Derby marksman David McGoldrick provided a major test of Pompey’s defensive credentials, before being joined by powerful striker James Collins in the second half. Mousinho felt his young central duo handled that challenge reasonably well.

He added: ‘David has 22 goals in the league and I have played against him, he’s a real handful and he’s got better with age. He’s a very clever player and he still has athleticism and an eye for goal. I thought they did really well against him.‘

'Maybe we need to be a bit braver in terms of the line, squeezing a bit higher and backing ourselves to go the other way.

'But overall they put in excellent performance and the only reason we took Ryley off was because he had a booking and we wanted to protect him.’