John Mousinho blasts 'generous' Portsmouth as Hull gratefully capitalise to deepen Fratton Park gloom

John Mousinho blasted Pompey’s ‘generosity’ after slumping to a fourth defeat in five matches.

Joe Gelhardt’s 79th-minute strike sealed a 3-2 success for Hull in a topsy-turvy game in which the Blues opened the scoring through the first of two Terry Devlin goals during the afternoon.

Yet, defensively, Pompey were once again desperately poor away from home, with Enis Destan and Kyle Joseph also netting for the hosts as they claimed the three points.

That’s now seven goals conceded in their last two away fixtures, yet, frustratingly, Mousinho’s men registered a clean sheet on Wednesday night against Wrexham.

And amid a hugely concerning period of form in the Blues’ season, their head coach criticised his team’s defending.

Mousinho told The News: ‘The performance for large parts was positive, particularly the way we started the game and we got ourselves ahead.

‘Ultimately, we’ll look back and the three goals we conceded were really poor. The third goal, in particular, is the one we look at and think come on, we’ve got to do a lot better than that. Particularly as we highlighted that is something which Hull do really well. That was the difference in the game.

‘There are always going to be different problems you face from game to game. I just thought some players who played particularly well the other night and hadn’t given their forward any change whatsoever, were a bit more generous today.

‘For the third goal, we’re in decent-enough shape and lose the runner, that is something we just can’t do, it’s impossible to sustain any level of performance doing that.

‘The second goal is a set-piece where we are happy with the set-up and then lose the header at the back post. The first goal is difficult to properly remember now, but I still think when the ball is wide, we have numbers and we don’t track runners well enough.

‘It is collective responsibility. Naturally you look back and go, we have to defend better, which we do, but it's on both sides.’

Devlin’s first was a deflected shot on 16th minute, while the second was a leveller on the stroke of half-time following a superb Josh Murphy cross.

Certainly that was welcome, with Pompey having failed to score in their previous three matches during a worrying slip down the Championship table.

Yet Mousinho was also unhappy over their second-half performance in terms of attacking approach.

He added: ‘In the second half we didn’t have a huge amount of pressure on the ball, but I don’t think we looked like we were exposed particularly and the (third) goal changed the game,

‘You feel like we need to not concede those three goals, which is absolutely fair, but also in the second half, in particular, you look at the amount of time we had the ball on the turnover and weren't positive enough or didn’t take care of the ball or came backwards on ourselves.

‘Ultimately, we invited pressure because of the way we also handled the going forward.’