John Mousinho said there were no excuses for Pompey folding so badly at West Brom.

Not for the first time in recent weeks, the Blues competed well early on in an away game only to collapse once they went 1-0 down.

The Baggies ended up 5-1 winners with a debut goal for sub Thomas Waddingham the only bright spot on a day when the Pompey travelling fans again sang to the end despite what was served up.

Now the pressure is on for Pompey to keep their vastly superior home form going when Millwall visit on Tuesday, followed by Burnley on Saturday.

Mousinho told the club website he was disaappinted with the display at The Hawthorns: 'It’s a really frustrating performance. We were beaten by the better side – there’s no doubt about that. I was really pleased with the way we started and we looked a solid team, creating the better chances in the opening 25 minutes.

'We went a goal down and I can live with that, even if Nico will be disappointed that he couldn’t keep it out. But then we just went under and for the second, we had two right-backs going in against a winger and lost the challenge.

'When you do that against the likes of Mikey Johnston then you’re going to get punished and it was a similar story for the third. They’re not challenges we would have lost on Wednesday.

'I thought it was just awful and didn’t know what we were doing. We made far too many poor decisions. It just seems to be something that happens far too often – conceding a goal away from home and then seeing our confidence drop.

'We don’t have the ability at the moment to dig in and find something extra, as we’ve been doing back at Fratton Park.'

Mousinho said he had to rest players in what's been a 'brutal schedule' for the team.

He said: 'No other club is facing the number of matches we are in January. It’s been too difficult for us to sustain the same team for week after week after week. There was far too high of an injury risk.

'The two games being rearranged for this month has just hurt us and I hope the fans can understand why we’ve done it. But I hope the players also understand that I still expect much more of them because Christian Saydee aside, all those guys have had a lot of minutes.'

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