Birmingham City produced a commanding display in their 4-0 win over Portsmouth but they were helped by a poor visiting team
20:24, 01 Nov 2025Updated 20:28, 01 Nov 2025
John Mousinho applauds the fans at the end of the Sky Bet Championship match between Birmingham City and Portsmouth(Image: Getty Images)
John Mousinho believes Portsmouth should have lost by an even bigger margin than the four-goal beating meted out by Birmingham City.
Just minutes after seeing his side ship three set-piece goals the Pompey boss gave a measured post-match press conference, summing up a game that saw the vistors slip two places down the Championship table to within four points of the bottom three.
Pompey were blitzed by Blues’ fast start and could have been a couple of goals down by the time Paik Seung-ho gave Blues the lead in the ninth minute.
Blues put the game to bed in the second half as Tomoki Iwata, Christoph Klarer and Keshi Anderson all put their names on the scoresheet.
By contrast Portsmouth didn’t even manage a shot on target – and Mousinho admitted there is much to think about.
“I don’t think it’s going to take a rocket scientist to work out, that we were really poor and deserved everything we got,” Mousinho said.
“We probably could have lost it by more, to be honest. A really, really poor afternoon.
“I’ll get angry as the night goes on, but look I can be extremely angry but ultimately it’s my responsibility for what we put out on the pitch, how we perform, the players that we have out there and ultimately what they’ve done.
“I look at it and I think, just as a as a snapshot, ‘If we’ve started a game that way in the first five or ten minutes and the players have done the opposite of what I’ve asked them to do, I’ve got it wrong’.
“I must have got the message or delivered the message wrong and I must be in a position where there’s either a breakdown in communication or we’ve got players that can’t listen, aren’t willing to listen and I’ve got to find the solution to that.
“I think if you look at the first thing that we did we talked about coming away from home to a place like St Andrew’s, know it’s going to be a hostile atmosphere, know that the home form here is incredibly good, off the back of some disappointing results, Birmingham are obviously going to come out and really try and dominate the game.
“So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that we don’t want to put ourselves under pressure, and we want to try and turn them and we want to try and make sure that we earn a bit of space.
“The first thing we do the ball goes back to the goalkeeper, we try and play short and we spoke about that today, we spoke about it yesterday, we did it on the training pitch yesterday, so that’s an issue that I have to try and correct.”
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