John Mousinho hails Portsmouth’s first-half display in beating Cheltenham

Posted Sunday, February 26, 2023 by PA

John Mousinho hailed Portsmouth’s first-half demolition of Cheltenham as the best display of his reign as the south coast side ran out 4-0 winners.

Ryan Tunnicliffe scored one goal and made another as the hosts cruised into a 3-0 half-time lead at Fratton Park.

Head coach Mousinho said: “The first 45 minutes were the best I’ve seen under my tenure.

“We were sloppy starting the second half, which gave them the opportunity to get into the game.

“Our aim is to play for 90 minutes, but it’s difficult to sustain when you are three-up that early, but you are always likely to get punished.

“I thought we played the ball really well and we were brave individually, we passed well. We said that passing side to side for the entire game wouldn’t benefit us.

“We need to penetrate at some point and move forward. I think that we mixed it very well based on that.

“It was great to get four goals without the centre-forward scoring, but Colby Bishop is disappointed that he missed a couple of chances.

“That’s not a problem for me, because I know he will continue putting them into the back of the net.”

Pompey took the lead inside five minutes when a pass from Bishop teed up Tunnicliffe to side-foot into the corner of the net from outside the box.

On 20 minutes, a neat one-two between Bishop and Michael Jacobs saw the latter convert for 2-0.

Owen Dale beat two Cheltenham defenders and shot against the bar, before Ronan Curtis fired home following Tunnicliffe’s pass on 26 minutes.

As hard as Cheltenham tried at the start of the second half, Pompey took back control, and although not as dominant as they were in the first, they added a fourth courtesy of a rocket shot from Louis Thompson in stoppage time.

Cheltenham boss Wade Elliott said: “I don’t think the players have let me or the fans down.

“I don’t think any of them go out there to not perform, but if I thought they did, I would say then that they have let the fans down.

“Defensively, we looked really ragged for the first time for a while. We need to look at things because that’s the second game in a row now that we have conceded early on.

“If we take the plaudits as we did against Plymouth, then we must be prepared to take the flak after today’s performance.

“We’ve got 15 games left, and several points we need to get from those. Whatever the players’ aspirations are, they’ll be worse off for it, whether they want to stay at the club or not, if we don’t achieve that.”