Portsmouth boss’ responds to Fratton Park boos as crowd turns amid desperate home struggles
Consternation spilled forth at Fratton Park, as boos rained down from the stands amid a bleak Bristol City reverse. Pompey boss John Mousinho gives his response.
John Mousinho insisted Fratton Park boos were entirely ‘understandable’ as frustrations boiled over against Bristol City.
And the Pompey boss is adamant the onus is on his players to lift the mood at PO4, amid another bleak afternoon as his side dropped into the Championship relegation places.
Pompey boss Mousinho: Boos are ‘understandable’
A terrible first-half performance led to the Blues’ downfall in the 1-0 reverse, with things improving but not nearly enough to turn their fortunes around.
It means Pompey have now lost five league games at home this season - the same amount of defeats they suffered on their own turf in the entirety of the 2024-25 campaign.
The mood turned in the first half as players came up short, with audible consternation aired. Boos then greeted the half-time whistle, with louder jeers at the end of the game.
Mousinho insisted he had no issues with that frustration from the home crowd, with the Pompey boss thankful supporters tried to rally his players as they toiled.
He said: ‘First of all, the key word (over the boos) is understandable.
‘I don’t think anyone in the stadium should be accepting what we produced in the first 20-25 minutes.
‘The lads, and us in general as a football club, are lucky the fans stuck by us and tried to generate an atmosphere.’
Pompey’s performance saw them fall to back-to-back defeats, after they served after a similarly disappointing effort as they fell to a 3-0 reverse at Sheffield United on Wednesday night.
Those efforts are a world away from the purpose and tempo seen as Millwall were dispatched last weekend on home soil. Mousinho doesn’t feel his team are freezing on home soil, however, but acknowledged there are fundamental issues which need to be resolved.
He said: ‘If we could, we’d be pro-active in changing things.
‘That’s a big ask for us, the staff and players to make sure we change those things and turn them around.
‘It’s a tough one (the difference from Millwall). We haven’t had much time on the training pitch from last week until now, when we put in that really good performance.
‘We have to really strip back the right things we do, and get better at those.
‘I don’t think it’s the demands of playing at Fratton Park, it’s the demands of playing football.
‘Whether it’s playing at Fratton Park or not we can’t come out and do what we did in the first 25 minutes, and that was not compete and lose far too many of those battles or duels.
‘These are cliches of the game which will remain forever and a day, far beyond when I’m in football. We just didn’t do that very well and, if you do that home or away from home, you get punished.’