Unflappable Portsmouth boss' calming message as Blues seek instant response after Blackpool set-back

John Mousinho is adamant there’s ‘no panic’ inside the Pompey camp in the aftermath of a rare set-back in their promotion challenge.

The Blues return to action tonight, keen to bounce back from Saturday’s 4-0 humbling at the hands of an impressive Blackpool.

It represented Pompey’s first League One defeat since March, an outstanding run stretching 27 matches unbeaten.

Now they travel to 17th-placed Burton, the team John Mousinho skippered to successive promotions as a player.

And all eyes will be on the Blues and how they respond after losing a two-month residency in top spot.

Mousinho told The News: ‘No panic, we’re going to continue as usual and then make sure we stick to what we were doing really well.

‘It’s a really tricky one because we haven’t tasted defeat in the league for so long, it felt very, very unusual. If we’d have lost a couple of games along the way and accumulated the same amount of points, but turned a couple of those draws into wins, maybe it would have felt more normal.

‘It feels a bit strange at the moment, but the streak is done, it’s gone, nobody is talking about it anymore. The most important thing is the game, we’ve got to get on with it and respond.

‘We don’t want anything drastically different from what we’ve been doing for the first three months of the season, to be honest. We have played very, very well in most of the games, Saturday being the exception.

‘It wasn’t just the result, it was also everything we looked at which underpins the result. We weren’t particularly pleased with it and got our comeuppance against one of the better sides in the league.

‘We now need to make sure we get back to what has made us a good side, having shown that consistently over the past few weeks and few months.

‘We need to play to our strengths and put in a good performance that will hopefully yield a positive result on Tuesday night.’

Joe Morrell is suspended and Josh Martin unlikely to start successive matches, so there are likely to be some changes at the Pirelli Stadium.

Although Mousinho won’t be ripping up his team on the basis of a maiden league defeat this season.

He added: ‘I don’t think you chuck the baby out with the bathwater, the most important thing for us is to stay consistent.

‘Of course there are going to be opportunities for players to come in when we don’t win games, but, what has been pretty constant throughout, is we have changed the side. Even when we hadn’t lost in 27 league matches, even when we’ve won matches.

‘We have picked teams based on what we thought was best for our side at this present minute and also what's best to play against the opposition.’