Portsmouth boss addresses growing Colby Bishop concerns amid two-month scoring drought

Colby Bishop’s two-month scoring drought is comfortably the worst of his Pompey career.

And while John Mousinho admits his team ‘are not hugely free-flowing’ at present, he believes the striker must focus on his own displays rather than agonise over a missing goal touch.

Since netting an equaliser at West Brom in August, Bishop has now gone eight games without scoring.

His previous longest spell without a goal was in April 2023, when drawing a blank over six matches in League One, with Mousinho in charge.

According to Wyscout, the 28-year-old hasn’t managed a shot in any of his last three appearances, while his most recent on-target effort was at Ipswich on September 27.

Including that Portman Road trip, the Blues have registered six goals in their last five matches - but none have arrived from their leading scorer from the previous three seasons.

Portsmouth boss: The most important thing for Colby is not to worry

Mousinho told The News: ‘We’ve faced it a couple of times so far in my time working with Colby, probably not quite to this extent in terms of length of time without a goal.

‘But, a lot of the time, Colby works these things out himself. All it takes is for one of those balls to fall to him inside the box and for him to put a foot through it. Maybe if the penalty had been given on Tuesday night, he puts that into the back of the net.

‘The most important thing for Colby is to not worry about the goals, never get too obsessed with scoring.

‘The overall performance is the most important thing, so he needs to make sure he does affect the game in the way we know he can affect it - and I think the goals will come off the back of that.

‘We have scored goals, but not quite as many as we’d like, we are not hugely free-flowing. We’ve scored goals in most of the games he’s played, against Ipswich, a couple against Watford, Middlesbrough, Leicester and Coventry.

‘But those chances haven’t fallen to Colby, whereas I thought there were a few chances for him early in the season.

‘So we’re not going to change our gameplan completely to try to target one player. We think if we keep doing the right things then we’ll create chances for him. It’s just a case of one of those dropping to him.’

57 goals for Pompey

Bishop has scored an impressive 57 times in 142 games since arriving from Accrington in July 2022 in a £500,000 deal.

In April, he registered a maiden Football League hat-trick during a 5-3 triumph at Norwich, with Matt Ritchie and Regan Poole the other scorers.

This term, his sole goal was a superb header from Josh Murphy’s left-wing cross at West Brom in August’s 1-1 draw, having missed a penalty against Norwich in the previous match.

‘I don’t think he’s missing chances’

Mousinho added: ‘I don’t think he’s missing chances, there’s just not a huge amount falling to him.

‘Naturally Colby is going to want to score goals, he is a goal-scorer, he's done that all his career, but he doesn't need to worry about it, I do think that will come.

‘The rest of his game is the most important thing for us, just making sure he’s right on top of that.’

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