‘We’ve fallen in love with this club' - what Portsmouth boss wants after one of toughest weeks of his life ends with Sunderland romp

Now the Pompey boss wants his side to use the high point of his stewardship as a springboard to success this season.

The Blues put the League One leaders to the sword, with a display of high-pressing quality in the testing torrential rain at Fratton Park producing a 4-0 success.

It saw Cowley’s side end their seven-game search for a league victory, and the club’s worst run for two-and-a-half years.

The 42-year-old admitted last week was one of the most testing of his life, as angst grew at the run of results.

Now, though, the challenge is to use the Sunderland win as a platform to get the season firing once more.

Cowley said: ‘We need this to be a catalyst. This has to be a benchmark in terms of the energy, effort and intensity.

‘I’ve been a football manager 15 years and there’s been other tough weeks.

‘But this is definitely been the longest I’ve been without a win.

‘So of course you do a lot of soul-searching and you look at what you do and how you do it.

‘You analyse everything because it means a lot to us.

‘We’ve fallen in love with this club. It’s a great club and we want it to be successful.

‘If we can get it going here I know what fun we could all have.

‘But we haven’t been able to find a consistency in our performance, even within the 90 minutes.

‘So it’s been a good end to what has been one of the toughest weeks.’

Cowley made a high-stakes call to stick with the same team who let supporters down with their weak performance in the 2-1 reverse at Burton Albion last Tuesday.

He knew he would wide open to criticism if that move had backfired, but believed the players who didn’t deliver at the Pirelli Stadium had a hunger to put things right.

Cowley added: ‘I’m pleased for the supporters.

‘We know what they want and we’ve been really frustrated we’ve not been able to find consistency in our performance in recent weeks.

‘So hopefully they saw the energy and intensity they want from their team.

‘We would’ve been heavily criticised for playing the same team if we’d lost.

‘But I saw in the players’ eyes they were hurting, there was a lot of disappointment and they let themselves down.

‘Sometimes you sense that motivation and make a call.

‘I could have made five or six changes after Tuesday, but sometimes you just have to hold your nerve as a manager even though you know there’s a lot of noise.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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