'That’s my honest answer’: Mousinho’s remarkably candid insight on where things now stand for Portsmouth
The season comes to a close against Birmingham City this weekend, with John Mousinho reflecting on another tumultuous campaign in honest fashion.
John Mousinho admitted he has his doubts over whether Pompey have improved as a Championship force this term.
That remarkably honest assessment from the Blues boss comes with his side set to bring down the curtain on their second-tier campaign against Birmingham City this weekend.
Pompey boss: ‘Doesn’t feel like we’ve improved, that’s my honest answer’
Pompey do so knowing a draw will supersede their 54-point total from last term, that in a season where until just a couple of weeks ago there were huge fears over relegation.
Mousinho reflected on the season and gave a candid insight on where he feels things stand, while seeing a group who’ve broadly been more competitive in games than last term.
He said: ‘It’s so hard to summarise, because the emotions of the season are so varied - so incredibly varied.
‘We’ve gone from terrific highs to horrendous lows and everything in between.
‘If I really dig down into whether we’ve improved as a team or not, I don’t necessarily think we have and it doesn’t feel like we have. That’s my honest answer.
‘Maybe if we’d picked up a few more results in that good run of form I'd feel differently - but we didn’t.
‘So we’re sat here where we are, but my big take is position and points are irrelevant in comparison to last year - but have we improved?
‘When I first came here we a top-eight side in League One. We were as top eight as we could be, but we couldn’t beat the top sides.
‘We lost to Peterborough, got battered by Barnsley and lost to Sheffield Wednesday. We couldn’t compete with the top boys.
Pompey boss: ‘Games have been close and competitive. We’re competing’
‘So my goal was to say we want to compete and get promoted, but it was much more about being competitive.
‘We could probably take care of half the teams but could we compete with the elite.
‘That was my ambition from that league. Then from last year to this year my ambition was to be more competitive and cut out the big losses away from home, so we improved our competitiveness.
‘We’ve done that to a certain degree, though I know there’s been a 6-1, 5-0, 4-0 and everything in between.
‘We’ve had too many times when we’ve been blown away, but the other games have been close and competitive. We’re competing, but we need to compete more consistently across the season.’
Pompey will not be able to repeat their 16th-placed finish of last season this weekend, with 17th realistically the highest they can finish thanks to Watford’s superior goal difference.
Mousinho feels like-for-like comparisons are futile, however, because they don't take into consideration issues like this term's injury list, which he ranks as the worst he’s seen in management.
He added: ‘You can compare the seasons in terms of position and points, but they are incomparable because of the amount of different factors we’ve had to deal with season on season.
‘It seems like there’s been a different crisis every month, but I guess every football club feels like that.
‘We had issues last year we addressed, but there were issues this year which were similar - but in different positions.
‘I think one of the pleasing things is, and I’m not a huge stats man but we pay a fair bit of attention to them, the underlying statistics we use in conjunction with our eyes and subjectivity. All of our performance metrics tell us we’re a much better team than last year. That’s really pleasing.
‘Now we’ve got to this points tally and would like to improve upon it.’