‘Blown away by Birmingham City…Millwall outstanding…Stoke City flying’: Portsmouth boss weighs up Championship
Coventry City are setting the pace with not many seeing the likes of Stoke City, Preston North End, Hull City and Millwall being in the chasing pack. John Mousinho discusses the make-up of the Championship ahead of his side’s return to action.
John Mousinho believes the Championship is ‘wide open’ this season as he lauded the division’s surprise packages.
But the Pompey boss insisted he isn’t shocked to see the likes of Stoke City, Hull City, Preston North End and Millwall challenging at the top end of the table this term.
Mousinho: Championship a tight league
And the Blues head coach feels his team have shown they can compete at the level once again, despite a disappointing run of form halting their promising start to the campaign.
Pompey return to action after the international break this weekend against Millwall, with the match marking a third of the season being completed.
The make-up of the division has surprised many with leaders Coventry City setting a powerful pace, while a host of sides not many were talking about as contenders form the chasing pack.
Meanwhile, fancied outfits such as Southampton, Sheffield United and Norwich City have laboured and find themselves in the lower reaches of the table.
All of Pompey’s wins and losses have been decided by the odd goal, with the exceptions of the disappointing 2-0 home loss to Sheffield Wednesday and 4-0 Birmingham City battering at the start of the month.
Mousinho feels those results tell you much about the small margins between Championship sides.
He said: ‘There’s some sides who’ve surprised with early form to be where they are.
‘My overall take so far is we got completely blown away from Birmingham, but apart from that have been in every game so far.
‘We haven’t quite performed enough in terms of wins, but it’s a very tight league. I’ve not looked at any of the sides really and thought they are going to blow everyone away.
‘We watched Wrexham recently take apart Coventry, who a few days prior took us apart and have taken pretty much every other team apart.
‘I suppose that’s the nature of it.
‘We lost to Coventry who were flying away at the top of the league, we lost to Stoke who’ve demolished two sides since then scoring eight goal and we lost to Birmingham who then demolished Millwall, who’d been one of the outstanding sides.
‘So it’s absolutely wide open and anyone can beat anyone.’
Stoke City ‘a really strong squad’
Despite few observers calling the make-up of the division at this stage of the season, Mousinho stated he’s not surprised by the identity of the Championship pacesetters.
The Pompey boss used the example of Stoke struggling last term despite having a squad and manager in Mark Robins he rates, as evidence of how sides can improve.
He added: ‘There will definitely be some raised eyebrows and teams who caused surprises
‘But they are all very strong sides. The likes of Stoke, who narrowly avoided relegation last year, did that with a really strong squad and manager who knows exactly what he’s doing at the level. So maybe it’s not a huge surprise when you see these teams flying.’