Portsmouth boss John Mousinho addresses goal-scoring worries amid big Southampton regrets
The Blues have scored 10 goals in nine matches in all competitions this season
John Mousinho criticised his team’s blunt St Mary’s display - but is still convinced Pompey possess the goal-scoring capabilities to fire themselves up the league.
The Blues have netted 10 times in nine matches this season, a worrying statistic epitomised by their failure to break down 10-man Southampton in the second half of Sunday’s south-coast derby.
Despite the numerical advantage, Mousinho’s men managed just two shots on target all game, with their quality in the final third frustratingly lacking.
Now they host Sheffield United on Wednesday night (7.45pm), desperate for a positive result having collected just two wins in all competitions so far this term.
And, irrespective of their Southampton showing, Mousinho still believes there are plenty of goals in his side.
‘We didn’t make decent-enough decisions’
He told The News: ‘At Southampton, very simply we didn’t make decent-enough decisions in the right moments and the quality wasn’t there when we needed it to be.
‘We do have the creativity, we have seen it, we know the players can produce, there's no issue there. We have shown that at times this season when we have scored goals, but unfortunately we just didn’t show it on Sunday.
‘How we handled the final third was one of my points to the boys after the game. James Bree comes away with man of the match, scores the goal, scores the winner, fine. He got in behind our back line once.
‘Yet we got in behind their back line - particularly their right-hand side - pretty consistently in both halves, especially the first half, but that final ball wasn’t quite there.
‘If the ball was cut back there was a good bit of defending or we didn’t quite finish off those moves well enough. From that build up until the final third, I thought we did some really good things, even against 11 men.
‘I would be more worried if we weren’t creating at all, if we weren’t getting into any areas. We have been here plenty of times in the past where we haven’t necessarily got into enough attacking areas and come away from games thinking maybe we didn’t do enough to score or be in games.
‘I don’t think that has been the case through this run of games. Maybe the one where we didn’t do quite enough was against Charlton, even then we had those big chances at the start of the second half.
‘Had we been a bit more clinical in a couple of these games then the result swings. The best example was Cardiff. We ended up scoring from a long throw and a really good counter-attack.
‘There was not a huge amount in the game other than those two bits, while at 1-0 Cardiff missed a big chance at the back post. Sometimes it happens in football.’
Right-back James Bree scored the decisive goal on 20 minutes, finishing off Finn Azaz’s cross past the recalled Nicolas Schmid.
The manner of the winner left Mousinho fuming, with the defender allowed to run from deep to meet Azaz’s delivery from the left.
And in a game of few goal-scoring opportunities for Southampton, that proved more than enough to secure a 1-0 victory.
‘A really, really poor goal’
He added: ‘Take the second half out of it, but even in the first half I didn’t think there was any issue in the way we defended other than the two big chances they had, which were almost carbon copies of each other.
‘As critical as we are of the attacking impetus, we also conceded a goal, a really, really poor goal. Bree runs from about 50 yards away, we’ve got to pick him up, and that was very, very similar to Larin’s chance in the first couple of minutes.
‘There’s plenty we need to improve upon at both ends of the pitch, but where we’ve probably been over the past few weeks is if we’d have put away a couple of more chances here and there, we’d be in a better position.’