‘The likes of QPR, Oxford and Plymouth’: Portsmouth boss heeds survival warning from Championship rivals

And the Blues boss has pinpointed a trio of rivals as offering clear evidence of how quickly his team could be pulled back into the relegation mire.

Optimism is at a season’s high with Mousinho’s side seven points clear of the drop zone going into Saturday’s clash with QPR at Fratton Park.

With 36 points in the bag, Pompey are now 14 points from the 50-point target sides aiming for Championship survival tend to reach for. Many observers believe it could be south of that figure this year, however, with Derby 21 points short of that threshold in 21st place with 13 games remaining.

Mousinho is urging caution over that stance, however, with the Blues boss highlighting the number of struggling sides who have put strong runs together in recent weeks and months.

This weekend’s QPR were deep in the mire until producing a run of 10 victories from 17 league outings, with the Londoner arriving at Fratton Park 13th in the table. Oxford United produced a run of nine wins without league defeat after appointing Gary Rowett as boss in December, while Plymouth have dragged themselves off the foot of the table with one loss in five in all competitions - dumping Liverpool out of the FA Cup in the process.

Mousinho said: ‘I don’t know if it will be lower than 50 points. There’s a couple of people who speak about it maybe being low, but not in my eyes.

‘There will be teams at the bottom who definitely pick up points, we’ve seen that and we’ve seen that in abundance.

‘The likes of QPR, the likes of Oxford, ourselves and Plymouth have all of a sudden picked up a bit of form. There’s sides you think might be down there struggling and all of a sudden they put a few wins together, then all of a sudden it’s different and vice-versa.

‘I think 50 points is still a decent enough marker to aim for, but if we get there we won’t then rest on that.

‘I think we’ll be happy and satisfied this year, if and when when we get to a position where we know we’re a Championship club next season - that’s the most important thing to us.’

The average points total for Championship survival over the last decade sits at 44.5 points - a figure Pompey are now just 8.5 points short of after back-to-back wins. Mousinho is affording little consideration to those figures, however.

Won’t come off gas

He added: ‘That’s fine looking at the past few years, but I think people would say you’re mad if you aim for 44 or 45 points: it’s just not what we’re trying to do.

‘We’re going to aim for as many points as possible and try to accumulate them as quickly as we can.

‘We won’t come off the gas. We’ll make sure we try to win every game individually.

‘Everything shapes up slightly differently when you aim for something different. We’re trying to aim for being away from the bottom three, while last year we were aiming for something different.

‘We had an idea around two points per game last season and this year it’s slightly more than a point per game this year - we have to keep going with that.’

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