'Pompey performing like a top-end team'

Marlon Pack celebrates Portsmouth's third goal at The DenImage source, Shutterstock
Image caption,

Marlon Pack was the eighth different scorer in Pompey's past nine league goals

ByTom Chappell
Portsmouth fan writer from Fournilwrittenalloverit
  • Published

When writing on Wednesday morning, I described Pompey's mammoth result at The Valley as our biggest away win of the season. Four days later and four miles across London, we had an even bigger result at The Den.

The power, physicality and combativeness from our January additions, coupled with a noticeable uptick in both performances and results is no coincidence at all.

Pompey have now already won more away games than in the whole of last season with seven still to play on our travels.

John Mousinho's side started strong from the off and probably reached the break the happier side at 0-0, albeit after a pretty tight opening 45 minutes.

The afternoon's defining moment came when man of the match Gustavo Caballero tucked the first of the afternoon away from the tightest of angles just after the restart.

He had absolutely no right to score from that position yet he did so emphatically and Pompey were up and running. That set the tone for a fantastic second half and meant Pompey were firmly in the ascendancy for the vast majority of the game thereafter.

Two impressively similar John Swift and Marlon Pack goals were punctuated by a momentary defensive concentration lapse - that aside, Pompey had turned up to the third-best side in the Championship at this moment and put on a pretty humbling display for them.

With the double completed over two clubs in a week and six goals on the road from five different players in four days, Pompey are performing much more like a top-end side than one down the bottom. And they became just the fifth side to beat Millwall at The Den this season.

If we were to go and get something, or even win at Wrexham on Tuesday, this might well go down as the best week on the road in Mousinho's tenure.

Any of us would've taken a four-point return from these three away games - and it's maximum points so far.

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