'Not befitting a Championship side': Portsmouth boss hits out at players after Aldershot humbling
The Blues used eight teenagers against the National League side
John Mousinho hit out at his senior players after Pompey were embarrassed by non-league Aldershot.
The National League side cruised to a 2-0 success on Wednesday night, capitalising on a Blues squad devastated by injury and unavailability.
A total of 12 players were ruled out of the Recreation Ground clash, plus Conor Shaughnessy, Thomas Waddingham and Harvey Blair were having their minutes managed. In addition, Rocco Shein still awaits his debut.
Instead, Mousinho turned to five Academy players, plus new first-team pros Chinedu Agu, Michael Ani and Nathaniel Chioma, to supplement numbers in his 22-man squad.
Yet it was the experienced players which afterwards earned his criticism.
‘I don’t think you can put it down to having the youngsters there’
Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘When the dust settles, we obviously had quite a few of the younger players playing. There were five in the first half from the Academy and first-year pros, with three in the second half.
‘But, as an overall performance, we would have expected better from the side. To be honest if you look at some of the performances, I don’t think you can put it down to having the youngsters there.
‘I know that results aren’t particularly important in pre-season, but the manner of the performance and the way we went about our business wasn’t particularly good.
‘We didn’t show enough in general in terms of what we’ve been doing over the past two-and-a-half weeks.
‘Of course we haven't been working consistently with this group, we haven’t worked with this group at all, we have just come in over the past couple of days. But I still think there’s more we can expect from everybody who has been working over the past two-and-a-half weeks.
‘Effectively, we kept the sides from Woking and just flipped them around. Anybody who wasn’t available for whatever reason we decided to fill in with the Academy players - and it just landed on that first-half team being a bit more heavily less available.
‘I still think there was enough in there to compete and we did okay for the first 30 minutes. Then, if you look at the two goals, they were nothing to do with the Academy players.’
Two goals in two minutes at Aldershot
Aldershot bagged two goals in two minutes midway through the first half through awful defensive mistakes by senior Blues players.
The first was finished by Hakeem Sandah from a left-wing corner which had been awarded after Ben Killip had been caught in possession in the build up.
Then, on 34 minutes, a careless Josh Knight was dispossessed outside the box, with Marcus Dinanga making it 2-0 to Scott Davies’ side.
With a team lacking the likes of Keshi Anderson, Marlon Pack, Terry Devlin, Zak Swanson, Connor Ogilvie and Josh Murphy, the scoreline proved too much for the Blues to find a way back.
Now they head to Bristol Rovers on Saturday, albeit with Devlin, Franco Umeh and Shein potentially featuring.
‘I just didn't think the performance was befitting of a side in the Championship’
Mousinho added: ‘The result doesn’t concern me. There are a few bits that probably do concern me in terms of performances, that’s something even at this stage of pre-season which needs to be better.
‘I just didn't think the performance was befitting of a side in the Championship. It doesn’t mean anything, we’ve got our first proper game in three weeks on Saturday, so we’ve got plenty of time to make sure we put everything right.
‘The whole two days against Woking and Aldershot was a reflection of where we are as a squad. We need those players back and to really increase fitness levels across the board.’
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