Portsmouth skipper’s honest message to faithful after Stoke City night of humiliation

And the Blues midfielder made it clear the players have to carry the can and not boss John Mousinho for their ‘unrecognisable’ 6-1 thrashing at the bet365 Stadium.

Mousinho’s side produced an insipid performance in a low ebb for the head coach’s Fratton tenure on a horror night in the Potteries.

Pompey took an early pummelling and fell behind, before responding with Mark O’Mahony’s maiden Blues goal in the 29th minute

But a shambolic 11-minute across the two halves saw five goals smashed past the hapless Will Norris, as Pompey fell to their biggest defeat in 16 years.

The 1,721 traveling supporters were unbowed, however, as they backed their team incessantly despite events on the pitch.

That led to Pack confessing to a humbling experience, as the Buckland boy thanked supporters on the final whistle.

He said: ‘Speaking after that is hard to do, but it’s the minimum the fans deserve.

They’ve travelled in their numbers and it feels embarrassing to go to them at the end. They’re with us through thick and thing and were with us through the whole game.

‘In my whole time here, the majority of the time we’ve given them a team to be proud of. We’ve represented them in their image but this was unrecognisable.

‘This was a team who was unrecognisable from the one we’ve seen over the last year or so.

‘It’s not empty words - those fans deserve an apology. They backed us to the end and they don’t deserve that - they don’t deserve that performance.

‘We need to, as a man, have a good look in the mirror because what we’re doing at the moment obviously isn’t good enough.

‘There was a big rollicking from the manager and myself at half-time. Then to come out and give that performance afterwards was embarrassing.

‘It was embarrassing for myself, the group and the fanbase.

‘You can talk about tactics but that was a group which got out-fought and out-battled - it pains me to say that.’

Pack was unequivocal in his position Pompey’s players will not let Mousinho take the blame for what unfolded, against a side who’d lost their past three league games going into last night’s clash.

He added: ‘We’ll shoulder the blame. The gaffer is good at shouldering responsibility but this isn’t tactics or anything like that - it’s on the players.

‘It hurts and we can use that as fuel - but it means nothing saying that until we get a result. We’ll be doing everything as a group to do that.’