John Mousinho fumes over 'deja vu' Portsmouth after late, late disappointment against Millwall
Frustrated John Mousinho admitted it was ‘deja vu’ as Pompey again tossed away a precious point at the death.
The head coach was left fuming after a 2-1 defeat at Preston last month following an 87th-minute winner for the hosts.
And it was the same again on Saturday as the Blues, in the very next fixture on their travels, lost in familiar circumstances - this time with Millwall claiming the 87th-minute winner.
With the Pompey still involved in a battle to stay in the Championship, that’s now two points surrendered from their last two away matches.
Mousinho told The News: ‘It feels like a bit of a deja vu from three weeks ago, to be honest. But the performance at Preston was better over the 90 minutes.
‘We didn’t play particularly well on Saturday. We were a bit too predictable, we went long too early on without trying to get the extra pass, then started the second half a bit slowly as well.
‘It wasn’t actually until we went a goal down that we started to play, started to play with a bit of confidence. We started to get the ball forward and put Millwall under pressure, we should have scored before we got the equaliser.
‘We were very good when we went a goal down. We have to find a way to at least get close to that level of performance when we’re not a goal down.
‘It was a case of getting back in the game and throwing it away again. It’s really frustrating when we get back into the game, then shoot ourselves in the foot and invite pressure before conceding the second.
‘My reaction after Preston was we needed to get some realism into the boys about the situation and how we were performing. I suppose having that reaction again means it has fallen on deaf ears.
‘It had fallen a bit on deaf ears against Preston, although we did react against Blackburn - and now we’ve done the same things again.’
‘We didn’t show enough bravery’
Mihailo Ivanovic opened the scoring in the 57th minute when he headed home a Millwall corner.
That was cancelled out by Andre Dozzell on 80 minutes, when he shot through a ruck of players into an unguarded net following Harvey Blair’s cross.
A rare away point seemed to be on the cards for the Blues, until Ivanovic grabbed his second three minutes from time, again with a header, on this occasion from Casper De Norre’s precise right-wing cross.
Mousinho added: ‘We didn't show enough bravery. We're not asking the lads to play 25-pass sequences out from the back and get it forward. We're asking to play the extra pass to try to entice the press and then go beyond that if we need to.
‘Otherwise it’s just going to be an easy day for the likes of (George) Saville and De Norre, who can pick up all the second balls they want all day if they know we are going to go longer.
‘As soon as the pressure’s off because we go a goal down, we start to play and start to show what a good side we are. We have to try to find a way to do that from the start.’