John Mousinho says patience can pay off for Pompey when they're trying to break down opponents.

Saturday's 0-0 draw with Cheltenham at Fratton was frustrating for everyone in royal blue, coming off the back of a couple of impressive wins over Leyton Orient and Exeter.

Mousinho told the media afterwards: '“It’s really disappointing that we’ve come away with just a point and I don’t think the performance necessarily deserved that. But we perhaps just need to be a bit better at unpicking defences at times, even if we dominated from start to finish.

'For all of that, though, we didn’t do enough to sustain attack after attack in order to create those cutting-edge chances you need. It’s going to be tough when sides come to Fratton Park and play like that – Cheltenham dug in and got exactly what they wanted from the game.

'So we have to be patient – and that doesn’t mean slowing the game down – in order to create more in the final third.'

The boss admitted it was a surreal afternoon, with injuries to two assistant referees seeing Pompey fan Julian Browing take over duties on one line for the final half hour.

Mousinho said: 'There was a chance the game could be called off because nobody knew about the guy who was going to come down. It wasn’t really too much of a problem for me, though, because he was arriving from the South Stand!

'He was a qualified referee and fair play to Cheltenham because they were happy for the game to continue. They perhaps sniffed that we weren’t quite at our best and that it was a good opportunity to secure the point.

'It was a bit of a surreal afternoon altogether, but I don’t that incident is why we weren’t able to score. Of course it doesn’t help, but there was still plenty of time left for us to get on the front foot and attack.'

Pompey host Fulham U21s in the EFL Trophy on Tuesday night and go to Stevenage in League One on Saturday.

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