'Lacking quality': Furious Portsmouth man blasts second-half display in gutting Southampton defeat

Regan Poole blasted Pompey’s second-half attacking performance and insisted: Nearly isn’t good enough.

Trailing 1-0 to Southampton, the Blues were presented with a golden opportunity to force their way back into the St Mary’s game following Cameron Bragg’s red card on the stroke of half-time.

However, despite dominating the second half, as expected, the Blues were dreadful in the final attacking third, barely testing keeper Daniel Peretz.

Instead 10-man Southampton comfortably held on to claim a south-coast derby victory through James Bree’s 20th-minute opener.

And Poole was fuming with the Blues’ failure to make their numerical advantage pay, along with so many promising positions.

‘I can’t really think of the the keeper making a save’

The centre-back told The News: ‘What disappoints me the most is the lack of testing the keeper. We got into so many good areas, but I can’t really think of the keeper making a save.

‘Okay, he caught a few crosses, he made a save from a header in the first half and parried it up, but did we test him enough? From the areas that we got in, definitely not, that was probably the most frustrating thing.

‘When they went down to 10 men, the game changed, we dominated the second half. The game definitely changed, they sat off us and let us come onto them, we got into so many good areas.

‘If you had asked us at half-time to be in those areas, we would have taken your hand off. But if you don’t capitalise on being in those areas, it doesn’t really matter.

‘Sometimes it’s hard to play against 10-men but speaking today, we dominated, from the 45th minute to the 90th minute, we dominated. There’s no doubt about it, but we didn’t put the ball into the net.

‘It was all about the final third, I can’t think of the keeper making a save in the second half - and when teams are down to 10 men, it’s not enough. You don’t score goals by not hitting the target.’

‘We are just nearly at the moment - but it’s not good enough.’

Mousinho introduced Adrian Segecic for Ryan Kavuma-McQueen at half-time, while made a triple substitution on 65 minutes, with Marko Milovanovic among those introduced.

However, there was still no way through as Southampton comfortably protected their penalty area, while Peretz had little to do.

It leaves Pompey 19th in the Championship, having lost five of their opening nine matches this season in all competitions.

‘We were lacking quality’

Poole added: ‘We are gutted, it’s such a big game, we had an opportunity to go there and really have a go in the second half and score a few goals, but we didn’t.

‘The goal in the first half is so frustrating, we should have done better in the middle of the park and it shouldn't have even got to that point. A similar chance happened in the first minute and Nico made a good save.

‘Southampton had a few blocks, but really speaking is it great defending? No. We were just lacking quality. It wasn’t a factor of great defending, we just didn’t capitalise on being in such good areas.’