Portsmouth defender admits shameful Birmingham City battering could’ve been worse
Jordan Williams confessed Pompey’s shocking Birmingham City thrashing could’ve been even more painful after his side’s pitiful capitulation.
And the defender has demanded his side find a response, after being handed a bleak 4-0 battering at St Andrews.
John Mousinho’s side were shocking against the big spenders, who were feeling the Championship heat after one win in six.
But Pompey were blown away in the first 30 minutes and very lucky to make it to the break with the deficit not being greater than a single goal. It got much worse after the interval, however, as Birmingham added a further three goals with the Blues barely laying a glove on their opponents.
Williams gave an honest appraisal of the performance from and pulled no punches over what Pompey produced, as the dressing room struggled to fathom the reasons for the display.
He said: ‘I don’t know why that happened or the performance was like that, but we need to put it right.
‘We’re disappointed and you don’t want to put in performances like that. It’s not good.
‘We have to come together as a group and keep pushing, there’s a lot we need to learn. We went 1-0 down and could’ve been three or four nil down after 20 minutes.
‘We came back into the game and had spells with the ball, but needed to create more. The thing that hurts the most is that’s not us. Why has that happened? We don’t really know.
‘We need to look at ourselves and put it right.’
Williams confessed the performance was doubly hard to take as Pompey had a chance to come back into the game in the second half, but instead threw the game away with two goals conceded in five minutes after the break.
He added: ‘We said at half-time we’d got away with it and it could have been three or four.
‘They had a lot of chances and we should’ve have thought that we’d conceded a lot of chances and should do something different. We need to learn and learn fast.
‘We had a spell on the ball in the first half, but couldn’t create chances.
‘We go at half-time thinking we need to start the second half well, but then we start slow again and are 3-0 down after 60 minutes.
‘It’s tough to take, but we need to learn from it - and learn fast.’