‘Caused a good team problems’: Rangers, Liverpool and Stoke City favourite on his whipping boys giving Portsmouth fright

Charlie Adam felt his strugglers had League One leaders Pompey worried.

And the former Premier League midfielder pointed to one moment of quality being decisive as his basement side fell to a 1-0 defeat to John Mousinho’s side.

Fleetwood were second best to the Blues in the first half at Highbury Stadium, leading to the former Rangers, Liverpool and Stoke man reading them the riot act at the interval. Adam felt it was a different story after the break, however, as a side winless in 12 games imposed their physicality on the game.

The Fleetwood boss told the club’s website: ‘When you give teams the opportunity in the first half, all they need is one moment and they took it, one pass opened us up and that was the game, I got stuck into them at half-time and I told them what I thought and what I expected of them.

‘That first half was unacceptable, and I require vast improvement from them because when we conceded the goal and that is what cost us the game in the end. The second half was better, we showed fight, and we showed some good energy.

‘The chances never fell for us; we will look back on it and we will have to go again next week - we had the handbrake on in the first half, maybe that comes from us as coaching staff, but we will take that and look back on it, but you can’t give a team like that the first half.

‘We caused a good team problems (in the second half), got on the front foot, and pressed a lot better which allowed us to get up the pitch. There are moments we have to work on, if we can put our system to 90 minutes then football matches will start to turn in our favour, and the players do respond well to our instructions.

‘The spirit and the confidence in the building is good, we are together, and I know my lads will give us the effort and the passion on a Saturday, the first half was definitely unacceptable and I require a vast improvement.

‘These Saturdays to Saturdays are important because in February we go back to Saturday, Tuesday and for late nights and travelling we need to get that first win as soon as we can.’

Celtic loanee Bosun Lawal epitomised the muscle and power that gave Pompey plenty to think about in the second half with the defender having a significant impact from the middle of the park, while former Charlton man Brendan Wiredu was also a force in the game.

Adam added: ‘I love them both, on what Bosun has done since he has come from the club in terms of his base, his size, his physicality anyone can see what he did with the ball today for a lad his size, there isn’t many midfielders that have the ability to work with what he has got.

‘Unfortunately, he isn’t our player, but for the season he is, he’s at a big to have him here at Fleetwood, hopefully in the next coming months he will return to Celtic a better player than he came here.

‘Brendan is a player we have here, you can see the smile on his face and signing that contract shows how committed he is to this football club, he believes in what we are trying to do and again he offers a few positions, he does really well he has great size and great physicality he is really one for the future.’