'Down in the dumps': Portsmouth boss toasts welcome Cardiff win - but is still demanding better

John Mousinho toasted Pompey’s return to winning ways - but is adamant his team can still perform better.

The Blues claimed a 2-0 victory over Cardiff at Fratton Park, with Conor Shaughnessy and Marko Milovanovic the scorers.

It was a much-needed positive result, having lost four of their five fixtures heading into the game, although there were still aspects to improve upon.

Certainly Mousinho recognised the necessity to continue evolving and building on the foundations of a welcome, if occasionally flawed, first home win of the campaign.

He told The News: ‘I’m delighted with the result, it was completely different to the other performances, we didn’t necessarily have a huge amount of control in the game, but I thought the first half was pretty good.

‘The second half became a bit fractured, Cardiff changed their shape, which caused us a couple of problems. Thankfully for us, after we got the second goal, the game broke up a bit as there were quite a few stoppages which probably helped us just to kill the game off.

‘Saturday and Tuesday we were really disappointed, we thought we had played well enough to get something out of those games.

‘Regardless of the performance, today I thought there were some really positive aspects, but we still need to improve in a lot of areas. You can’t be perfect in everything that we do, we strive for that so there are going to be opportunities.

‘We have been down in the dumps because of the results, the performances haven’t been a million miles off it and there’s loads we want to do better, I never ever want to hide behind that.

‘We have to make sure we are level when we win games and level when we lose games - and just look for areas to improve because that's going to make us better.’

Shaughnessy opened the scoring on 31 minutes when he headed home debutant Tyrese Shade’s long throw from the left.

The match was then sealed seven minutes into the second half when Marko Milovanovic - having previously missed two glorious chances - finished off Adrian Segecic’s excellent right-wing cross.

Mousinho added: ‘I thought we limited Cardiff to very few in the first half.

‘They had more chances in the second half when it became a bit stretched, but obviously so did we. We had some really, really good opportunities to put the game to bed and that would be my message to the lads.

‘In those moments when you go 2-0 up, you deserve to be 2-0 up, so can we work with a bit more care and cause Cardiff a few more issues? At 2-0, there is always that danger that goal goes in and the whole game changes.’