Boss pleased with Johnstone’s Paint Trophy progress
Pompey have not always got what they deserved this season.
But Guy Whittingham was pleased to see a dominant performance result in victory at Torquay.
The Blues boss would have preferred his side to have completed the job inside 90 minutes.
Instead they had to come through a penalty shoot-out in order to progress in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy.
Pompey scored all five of their spot-kicks, meaning Lee Mansell’s miss proved costly for the hosts.
And Whittingham hopes the result can spur the Blues on to start climbing the League Two table.
He said: “Our points tally this season hasn’t always reflected our performances. We’ve done enough to have won more games.
“So it’s nice to come through a match having kept a clean sheet and eventually won the game.
“We won a lot of corners and got our heads to them first, but unfortunately none of them went in.
“The keeper made a good save to deny Sonny Bradley and we had another decent corner move straight off the training pitch.
“But hopefully the result will be a catalyst for us to go forward and show people that we’re a decent team who can win matches.”
Whittingham was impressed with Pompey’s spot-kick prowess, especially the final one – an audacious chipped effort from Yassin Moutaouakil.
He said: “When Alan McLoughlin came back and said that Yassin was on the last one we thought ‘what’s he going to do here?’
“But he was confident enough to do what he did and if it goes in the back of the net then it’s a good penalty.
“Five out of five isn’t bad – we worked on them in training the previous day because we knew it was 90 minutes then penalties.
“Because of that the lads all looked confident and they were all very good penalties.”