Portsmouth boss admits surprise after rejuvenated Blues shock him with Wrexham second-half showing

John Mousinho admitted Pompey’s second-half fightback surprised him after believing Wrexham ‘was a game too far’.

Challenged with a third away trip in eight days, the Blues understandably looked jaded and lethargic in the opening 45 minutes as the hosts went in at the break with a comfortable 2-0 lead.

However, having replaced Gustavo Caballero with Harvey Blair on the right wing, Pompey were unrecognisable after the interval to dominate the second.

Suddenly discovering their energy and appearing to reinvigorated, they were handed a lifeline on 49 minutes through Zak Swanson.

Yet, for all the visitors’ attacking pressure, that equaliser wouldn’t arrive as the Wrexham fans breathed a sigh of relief at the final whistle as they held on to win 2-1.

Mousinho told The News: ‘One of the things I was concerned about was after half-an-hour we didn’t look like we were as energetic, as front-footed and as aggressive as we have been.

‘I thought maybe the travel and the away games had taken it out of us - it clearly hadn’t because we played the second half so well.

‘Credit to the lads for really going out and dominating the second half, we just couldn’t get the second goal.

‘I would have understood it if we had come out in the second half and looked jaded as well and you think “Okay it’s just a game too far”, that’s what I was thinking in my head. Clearly it wasn’t because of how good we were in the second half.

‘You look at how much energy we had, we played five yards higher up the pitch, we won tackles, we won second balls, we came out of small situations with a lot more energy and caused Wrexham a huge amount of problems.

‘I expect them to be absolutely shattered after every single game. The effort levels the boys put in at Charlton and Millwall and the games before that, we’ve had an unbelievable fixture schedule over the past few weeks, no-one has had three away games on the spin.

‘We have that fixture congestion to deal with and, at the minute, don’t have a fully-fit squad that we need to deal with that.

‘Yet, in fairness to the boys, I think they’ve done a superb job. We more than deserved to get back in the game, we had a huge amount of pressure in the second half - and just couldn’t get the ball into the back of the net.’

Frustratingly, Pompey had 15 corners over the 90 minutes, with most occurring in the second half, yet they couldn’t capitalise.

In contrast, of Wrexham’s three corners, Max Cleworth netted their second goal with a header from George Dobson’s delivery.

And Mousinho was disappointed at both ends of the pitch.

He added: ‘We looked threatening from corners, the ball would drop at the back post or drop on the penalty spot and we didn’t quite get that second contact.

‘Obviously the difference in the game is the set-pieces and we need to defend that set-piece a bit better as well. We had a lot of opportunities, we managed to score one at the weekend and that made the difference getting the third goal at Millwall.

‘And unfortunately against Wrexham it didn’t quite drop.’