Darren Moore hailed the character of his Wednesday side after seeing them keep up our promotion challenge in the intimidating atmosphere of Fratton Park today.
A fifth successive win takes us three points clear at the top of division one and former Portsmouth player Moore said after the 1-0 win: “The lads showed character today and we needed to, this is a former stomping ground of mine so I know this club and what the fans can generate.
“There were 18,000-plus in here today, so the atmosphere was there. The boys were competitive and you have to deal with the crowd as well and I thought they did that.
“I told them that I’m proud of their performance in terms of their mentality and character today. It was a hard-fought win.”
He added: “I was really pleased that we dealt with the crosses because we got the first contact. What I wasn’t pleased with was how Portsmouth players could lift their heads and get a cross in the box, we weren’t getting our distances right, so we tried to make some tweaks to stop the balls coming in.”
Wednesday lost George Byers to a muscle injury just after the half-hour mark and the manager said: “It’s tightness. We’ll give it a couple of days to recover from. He just couldn’t get it going so we took him off as a precaution really today.”
On the red card for Dominic Iorfa, which rules him out of Friday night’s home game with Bolton, Moore said he had no complaints about the second yellow card for a challenge but felt the first yellow for time-wasting was debatable.
Moore also revealed that, despite leaving Sheffield early yesterday afternoon, the team didn’t arrive at their hotel until 11pm last night, explaining: “The conditions getting out of the Sheffield area weren’t great and there were a few issues with the coach company. It wasn’t ideal.”