Jay Mingi hailed Pompey’s attitude in their Papa Johns Trophy group stage success over Aston Villa’s under-21s.
They recovered from Saturday’s first league defeat of the season at Ipswich to secure a superb 5-0 victory.
Ronan Curtis and Michael Jacobs both struck in the opening few minutes, while Josh Koroma bagged a brace and Reeco Hackett also found the target.
Mingi was used in both midfield and defence during the Fratton Park rout and believes those early goals set the tone.
He said: “I don’t think we approached the Crawley game last time out in the right way and so this was about correcting that.
“We also lost our first league game on Saturday and we wanted to bounce back from that and find our flow.
"I feel that I’ve personally developed since last season and the gaffer and his staff have shown so much faith in me, so I need to keep working hard."
“I don’t think Aston Villa expected us to come out the way we did. We applied pressure and ran at them, with those first 10 minutes setting things up.
“They started going a bit more direct towards the end when I was in defence, but I thought we dealt with that.
“I feel that I’ve personally developed since last season and the gaffer and his staff have shown so much faith in me, so I need to keep working hard.”
Mingi has been dealing with a shin problem and is trying to work out the best way to deal with the issue.
He said: “They were fine for the first 20 minutes, but I felt it again for the rest of the half and just had to play through that.
“It settled down a bit after the break. It’s something that just comes and goes for me – it’s pretty random.
“Because it’s not a common problem, it’s difficult to know how to deal with it. It’s trial and error, but we’ll get to the bottom of it.”