'Stronger and better': Why Portsmouth are unrecognisable four months on from historic moment against QPR

The sides previously locked horns in October in a grim battle between two of the bottom three at Loftus Road.

The Blues won 2-1 that day, representing not just a maiden victory of the season but an historic first Championship victory since since April 2012. Now they are a completely different team.

Of the starting XI four months ago, just Nicolas Schmid, Connor Ogilvie and Josh Murphy can be expected to make Mousinho’s line-up for the return fixture.

Results have also picked up considerably, with four wins in the last eight matches lifting them into 18th place in the Championship.

As for QPR, who sunk to the bottom of the table that day, they now sit in 14th, just four points off the play-off spots following a remarkable run of form since the end of November.

Certainly it will be a much-changed Pompey hosting them at Fratton Park on Saturday.

Mousinho told The News: ‘If you ever look at the starting line-up early in the season and compare it to later on, there's always going to be a lot of changes.

‘We try to hammer that point home to the players when there's that huge disappointment of maybe not getting into the starting line-up on the first day of the campaign. Things change very, very quickly, Conor Shaughnessy was the prime example of that last season.

‘We’ve improved as a team as well. We have definitely changed the way we play, we’ve changed the outlook. After that QPR game we then had a really disappointing result at Cardiff because we weren't quite at it in terms of consistency.

‘We have certainly got a bit more defensively solid, which is where we've been poor this season. We have let ourselves down by conceding too many. Scoring goals hasn’t been a huge issue for us, but we have conceded far too many.

‘We tried to focus on that defensive solidity, getting the press right, getting a few of the defensive details right, I think that’s really helped and built a bit of confidence for us going forward.

‘I can't quite pick out the QPR starting line-up that day, but my gut instinct at the moment is the squad is stronger, that’s the most important thing, and I definitely feel we have improved since then.

‘There’s a load of factors. We feel we’re a stronger and a better team, but we have to prove ourselves, we can’t think like that, we can’t speak about it.

‘I’m sure QPR are looking at all the things they can do to try to exploit us, so we’ve got to attack the game, don’t get too carried away over what we’ve done over the last week - because we haven’t achieved anything yet.’

Pompey are buoyed following successive wins over Cardiff and Oxford United, creating a seven-point cushion above the relegation zone.

As for QPR, they hammered Derby 4-0 in their last outing, leaving the Rams in the final relegation spot with 13 matches remaining.

Mousinho added: ‘We’ve won two games in a row but, by no means, does that mean we’ve cracked it. We are still in a position where we have to pick up loads more points.

‘We need to be right on it and bang on it again against a very, very good side on Saturday.’