'We deserved a win': Portsmouth boss' frustration after Oxford United stalemate

In an Oxford United fixture he described as a ‘must win’, he is adamant the Blues ‘deserved’ to win, having led through Mark O’Mahony’s second-half goal and also missed a penalty.

However, they were held to a 1-1 draw courtesy of Louie Sibley’s 72nd-minute opener, leaving them still searching for a first Championship victory nine games in.

On one hand, he was delighted with the players’ response to the 6-1 hammering at Stoke days earlier - on the other it was frustration that Pompey weren’t toasting three points.

He told The News: ‘It’s really difficult for me to summarise to the players because part of me wants to be really furious with the fact we haven’t won the game, but also happy we’ve played as well as we have and created as many chances as we have.

‘It’s the most chances we have created this season by a long, long way, so there are steps in the right direction, there is positivity, but, ultimately, we weren’t good enough.

‘Take the penalty out of it, the game may or may not have changed off the back of that, but we got ourselves in front in good fashion, we were well worthy of the lead.

‘After that there wasn’t relentless pressure on our goal, we had the ball, we controlled the game and gave a very, very soft goal with Oxford’s first shot of the second half. Nico was just a spectator for most of it.

‘Even after 1-0 up, Oxford weren’t rushing to get back in, there wasn’t really any urgency. Of course we have to be much, much better than that because we wanted to come away from the game with three points.

‘We definitely deserved to have won it. If you look at the chances and the flow of the game, we definitely should have won, we deserve to win in terms of chances created, but we don’t deserve to win if you don’t put the ball into the back and you don't defend properly.’

Mousinho made four changes from that Stoke starting XI, with Will Norris, Paddy Lane, Zak Swanson and Harvey Blair making way.

And he was delighted with the subsequent response against Oxford, irrespective of the draw.

Mousinho added: ‘It’s brilliant having that response, but we need to put ourselves into the position where it’s not about responding and we should have done a lot better against Stoke.

‘We definitely got that response in the opening 10-15 minutes, we were all over Oxford, we got a penalty and didn’t score. The game then probably petered out slightly towards half-time, but we came out in the second half, performed really well, got the goal and the most disappointing thing is we didn’t capitalise on that.’