Mark Bonner baffled as to how Cambridge lost at home to Portsmouth

Posted Sunday, March 05, 2023 by PA

Mark Bonner could scarcely believe that his Cambridge side fell to defeat against in-form Portsmouth.

Colby Bishop’s header 25 minutes from the end separated the sides, after Bonner’s U’s had dominated the first half and limited their opponents to few chances.

Cambridge slip to five points from safety having lost three games in a row without scoring since beating Oxford a fortnight ago, while conversely Portsmouth’s success was their third on the spin.

“They’re the most frustrating ones,” said Bonner of the defeat. “There are so many moments in there when we can get ahead, where we can win that game.

“We had some brilliant periods of play, 17 attempts to their five, our XG is 1.8 to their 0.6, we have a penalty that doesn’t get given second half. Statistically the win probability for us is 98 per cent.

“They put the ball in the net but that’s a winning performance for us.

“They’ll be delighted to get on the bus because they (Portsmouth) don’t deserve to win it.

“That’s the level that will give you the best chance of getting results. I won’t take an ounce of criticism for that performance. That’s the level we’ve got to get to.

“I can’t criticise us other than not putting the ball in the back of the net. That performance had everything else that we wanted. We’ve got to find that as often as we can and if we do that we’ll have a right fight on our hands for the remaining games.”

John Mousinho acknowledged that Portsmouth were not at their best but declared the result an important win.

“We ground out the win, I think that’s the way to sum it up,” Mousinho said afterwards.

“We weren’t great in the first half. I thought we controlled possession but we just didn’t create anything, no crosses, no shots.

“There was a bit of disappointment there because we got into some good areas. For whatever reason we couldn’t get any final product.

“We came out in the second half and I thought we were much, much better. We were excellent up until the goal, we were a lot more threatening and we created some really good chances, down our right hand side in particular.

“Once we were on the ball it was about being a bit more patient and less sloppy. That was the word for what we thought we saw in the first half.

“I’ve said to the boys in there that these are the really important wins and really important performances, to grind it out. Sometimes there’s not going to be a huge amount of pretty football to dissect on Monday morning but it’s massively important they come away from these places with three points.”