Portsmouth boss lauds his patched-up heroes as swathe of issues can’t halt Peterborough victory

John Mousinho saluted patched-up Pompey as they took a giant step towards promotion at Peterborough.

Mousinho’s men picked up a massive 1-0 win at London Road to move nine points clear of third-placed Bolton, with seven games remaining.

The Blues were hit by illness which deprived them of the services of both Joe Rafferty and Paddy Lane, who were both due to start the game.

Then they lost Christian Saydee to a first-half hamstring injury to further hit their plans, in a season of unprecedented injuries at Fratton Park.

Yet Mousinho’s side emerged victorious with the only goal of the game arriving via Kusini Yengi 13 minutes from time.

The Pompey boss spoke of his pride in his players to pick up three monumental points in such trying circumstances.

He said: ‘I feel relieved and elated, but the prevailing emotion is relief because of how good Peterborough are and how difficult it was to prepare.

‘Then there was the elation of winning the game in the circumstances we did, because especially in the second half, the lads were superb.

‘We had illnesses before the game with Paddy (Lane) and Raff (Rafferty) both due to start the game, but both fell ill last night.

‘We checked on them this morning and Paddy was a bit worse than Joe, so we sent him home and Joe said he wanted to be involved.

‘He wanted to soldier on and at least be available on the bench, which was brilliant from him.

‘We had to tell Jack (Sparkes) and Zak (Swanson) they were starting and it was a reflection of how good this squad is and how much faith we have in these players to do that - and they were two of the best players on the pitch. They were both excellent.’

The win is a huge one for Pompey as they made it 12 games unbeaten in League One and ended Peterborough’s six-game winnng sequence.

It also puts a fair amount of daylight between those outside of the automatic promotion spots with seven games left.

Mousinho added: ‘It’s a big win. I haven’t seen the league table, but a couple of people shouted results at me.

‘The most important thing was for us to take care of business and ourselves.

‘Between now and the end of the season we have to take care of what we can take care of - and everything will hopefully get sorted off the back of that.’