Defiant Portsmouth boss' powerful message to Fratton faithful after relegation set-back
John Mousinho is convinced Pompey will rally once more and resume their impressive charge up the Championship table.
A 4-0 humbling at Derby ultimately saw the Blues dumped back into the Championship relegation zone this weekend, with Cardiff leapfrogging them.
It ended an encouraging four-match unbeaten run which had dragged them out of the bottom three for the first time since the start of September.
Indeed, Pompey have shown fine form of late, with two wins, three draws and one defeat in their previous six matches.
In addition, they remain the only side in the bottom five to have won over the last five matches - in fact winning twice.
And Mousinho is convinced they will bounce back once more, starting with Coventry next weekend.
He told The News: ‘We’ll definitely bounce back, we’ve done that before this season.
‘Probably at times, after a couple of the displays we’ve had, some have looked at it and thought “Well that’s not a side that’s going to get out of it” or “That’s not a side that’s going to actually make a fist of it”.
‘Yet certainly over the past five or six weeks we’ve been excellent and pretty much in every single game we’ve played.
‘We’ve had some really, really good results, we’ve kept clean sheets, we’ve looked like a threat going forward.
‘I am not concerned about that, there’s a load of things to worry about in terms of individual bits and things we can do better, but I’m not thinking it’s doom and gloom and that we haven’t got a hope going into any of the games.
‘We’ve played some of the big boys in the division and been absolutely fine, so we have to just make sure we keep going on that trajectory rather than we did on Friday night.’
It was a sobering defeat after some heartening displays of late - and Mousinho admits he incorrectly believed that that level of disappointing performance was now well behind them.
He added: ‘I thought those sort of performances were behind us. I don't think anybody would have said you’re being naive believing that going into the games.
‘We deserved to have a bit of confidence going into Derby, but something has gone wrong, we haven’t performed as well as we needed to perform.
‘We have been in this situation a couple of times, yet it does feel very different to how it did after Stoke and Cardiff. We are in a much, much better position now than previously and the acid test is going to be when we play Coventry at home.