Portsmouth boss' transfer window admission over striker targets as scoring woes continue
The Blues have scored just 15 goals in 14 Championship games since January 1
John Mousinho reflected on Pompey’s January recruitment in attacking areas and insisted: We did everything we could.
The struggling Blues entered the January transfer window as the second-lowest scorers in the Championship with 21 goals from 23 matches, with only Sheffield Wednesday worse off.
They subsequently recruited Milli Alli, Gustavo Caballero, Keshi Anderson and Jacob Brown to bolster their goal power, with attackers representing four of their seven signings.
However, a second centre-forward pursued by the Blues in addition to Brown eluded them - and, subsequently, goals are still in short supply.
With 15 goals in 14 games since January 1, it remains a glaring issue for Mousinho’s men, who rightly believe that wastefulness has cost them deserved points of late.
‘In January, we did everything we could’
Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘Not scoring goals has been consistent throughout the season, even when we haven't been quite as dominant as we’ve been previously.
‘In January, we did everything we could in terms of trying to bring players in. There have always been times post-January where it’s looked like we’ve had enough power in the side to create chances, whether that’s one of the forward players scoring or somebody else from another part of the pitch.
‘There have definitely been times where we’ve looked like we’ve been a lot more threatening from those situations, whether that’s West Brom, Millwall or Charlton, we have scored goals.
‘So we tried (to sign attacking players). Whether we get that right or have got that wrong, we’ll see at the end of the season.
‘At the moment we’re not scoring enough goals, that’s down to a number of factors and we’ll have to try to improve on that as we go along.
‘Any time we try to sign any player and we don’t manage to sign that player, it’s not something we are happy about, we want to hit all of the targets we set ourselves. It’s not always possible.
‘We tried to address the issues we thought we had in terms of goals in January, we have added a lot of attacking players at the top end of the pitch and signed three wingers. Jacob Brown as well, who has come in and scored. We did try to do that.
‘If you had said you could take every single one of your frontline targets in January then absolutely we’d have done it, but that’s not always possible.’
Still second-lowest scorers in the Championship
As it stands, Pompey are the joint-second lowest scorers in the Championship this season, along with Charlton, Blackburn and Oxford.
Indeed, while Adrian Segecic is their leading scorer with six, that’s more league goals than Colby Bishop (two), Makenzie Kirk (one), Conor Chaplin (one) and Jacob Brown (one) put together.
The Blues’ current second-highest scorer is actually Terry Devlin - with his five arriving in three different games.
Mousinho added: ‘In the first half of the season we were an okay side. We did pick up some results, but just didn't score enough goals and that was something which was a feature of our play from very, very early on.
‘That’s even when we took seven points from our first four league games. We obviously scored one against Oxford, which was enough to win it, one against West Brom, Norwich and Preston.
‘So we weren’t exactly scoring in the first part of the season when we were doing pretty well in terms of league position - and that has continued.
‘We look solid enough to defend leads against Millwall and Charlton, but you can’t always defend for the entire 90 minutes and expect us to keep a clean sheet every game. The quality of the Championship is so high.
‘If we add goals to what we are doing at the moment, I think we’ll completely change our fortunes. Without goals, we aren’t going to win games, it’s as simple as that. We need to add goals.’
Your Next Pompey Read: Ex-Portsmouth favourite grabs global headlines after ruthless sacking by KSI