'Two proper football clubs': Portsmouth boss hails season's best after toppling Leeds in front of 'brilliant' Fratton faithful

The Blues shocked Championship leaders Leeds to claim a 1-0 victory, courtesy of Colby Bishop’s second-half goal.

It represented a first defeat in 17 league fixtures for Daniel Farke’s men, while the triumph lifts Pompey 10 points clear of the relegation zone with 10 matches remaining.

For Mousinho, it was a battle between ‘two proper football clubs’ - and produced the Blues’ finest display since returning to the Championship following a 12-year absence.

He told The News: ‘I don’t want to sound too cliched and boring, but this will feel even better if we go and follow that up Wednesday (Plymouth) and again on Saturday (Preston), those are the most important things.

‘However, I will take the ecstasy of today and how well the boys have played and how brilliant it was to be here at Fratton Park. Certainly, in the moment, it feels like a massive win and it was a brilliant, brilliant day.

‘The atmosphere all the way through the game was brilliant, the game was quite rightly built up focused on two proper football clubs coming together and at different ends of the spectrum at the moment.

‘Leeds are a side who I think are littered with Premier League quality coming here, so naturally the atmosphere was really good. With the way we went about our business in the second half, the whole stadium was absolutely rocking.

‘It’s our best performance of the season. We’ve had some really good ones at home and we were exceptional away at Sheffield United without getting the rewards, so it feels like it right now.

‘Leeds are a top, top side, they are a Premier League team in the making, and to come here and do what we did, it was probably our best performance so far this season. We’ve now got to keep on top of that and keep going.’

Bishop swooped on 61 minutes, galloping onto Connor Ogilvie’s ball down the left flank to beat Illan Meslier with a wonderful first-time finish.

At the other end, Nicolas Schmid produced some fine saves, particularly late on, with stops from Junior Firpo and then - in stoppage time - Sam Byram’s attempt from a corner.

But Mousinho’s men held out for another huge win to cement their standing in 17th place ahead of Wednesday’s visit of Plymouth.

The Blues head coach added: ‘It was built on the physicality, build the performance, on how well we pressed, the effort that was put in. The times the press was broken, we had to recover to sprint and put in tackles and headers in, we defended the box pretty well.

‘Interestingly, I thought a couple of Leeds’ better moments came from us making some poor errors, errors of judgment, back inside the pitch and not winning tackles.

‘If we break it down, though, we’ve got 11 lads and the subs coming into the dressing room absolutely shattered - and that says everything.’