'Ridiculously poor': John Mousinho blasts Portsmouth players and issues Leeds warning after 4-0 thumping by Wycombe
Frustrated John Mousinho blasted ‘ridiculously poor’ Pompey after a dreadful 4-0 defeat to Wycombe.
The Blues hosted the League One side in a behind-closed-doors match at their Hilsea training ground on Saturday, consisting of two 60-minute periods.
John Mousinho used 22 players in the fixture - with barely any emerging with credit, according to the head coach.
He told The News: ‘It was a good exercise from the fitness standpoint, the players have some decent minutes in their legs.
‘Apart from that, there aren’t too many positives to take, other than it’s a fantastic time to lose a game like that with a couple of weeks to go until the start of the season.
‘Away from the result, the performance is the big thing for us, we really weren’t at it and it’s a wake-up call for us going into the season. I thought both of our teams were really poor.
‘It’s amazing, honestly it’s a brilliant result for us at this stage of the season. We had performed so well up until this point in training and in pre-season games, then, when the level stepped up, the way the boys handled the ball, the way we pressed, everything wasn’t up to scratch.
‘It’s a really good time for that to happen rather than us maybe get a way through the next week and then everything is ready to go into the Leeds game.
‘We all talk about pre-season friendlies and how it doesn’t mean anything. They don’t mean anything in terms of results, but performance definitely does. You can’t turn it on and off and then go to Elland Road and get anything from it.
‘There’s a lot of learning points. The staff can dissect it and go “Here are the reasons why we didn’t get what we needed to get out of that in terms of the performance”.
‘If we’d have lost 4-0 and performed well I wouldn’t have cared, sometimes in these games we aren’t organised from set-plays, there are trialists here and there, so you might not think we are as cute as we need to be. But none of those things were excuses for the way we played over 120 minutes.’
Pompey travel to MK Dons on Tuesday (7.30pm) and then wrap up their pre-season schedule by facing Charlton (August 3).
They then kick off their long-awaited Championship return with a trip to Elland Road on August 10 to face Leeds.
Mousinho added: ‘I thought Zak Swanson was outstanding in the second 60 minutes (against Wycombe) and there were some decent performances in the first 30 minutes, when he did dominate the game largely.
‘But, after that first 30 minutes, we played some ridiculously poor football considering how good some of these players are and considering the level.
‘Wycombe were right at it, but four months ago we won at Adams Park with largely the same set of players.’