John Mousinho savours best performance of his reign as Portsmouth beat Ipswich

John Mousinho savoured possibly the greatest performance of his reign after Portsmouth boosted their Championship survival hopes by denting Ipswich’s automatic promotion push with a shock 2-0 win.

Quick-fire goals from Conor Shaughnessy and Colby Bishop in the closing stages of the first half moved Pompey four points clear of the relegation zone with four games to go.

Portsmouth manager Mousinho was appointed in January 2023 and guided the club to promotion from League One the following season.

Tuesday evening’s victory at a raucous Fratton Park followed Saturday’s last-gasp 1-0 success away to promotion-chasing Middlesbrough which prevented Pompey from slipping into the bottom three.

“In the moment it feels like the best performance since I’ve been here, and there’s been some good ones,” said Mousinho.

“(It’s) definitely the best performance of the season and with everything taken into account – circumstances, where we’ve been over the past few weeks – I think all of that is justified.

“The mentality off the back of the win on Saturday is something we haven’t had for the majority of the season.

“Whenever we’ve won games, we’ve never followed it up.

“We did it once, Charlton to Millwall (in February) but there have been a lot of false dawns where we’ve won one game, turned a corner, played brilliantly well and the next game it’s not quite been there.”

Defender Shaughnessy headed home Adrian Segecic’s corner in the 42nd minute before striker Bishop swept home just two minutes later to spark wild scenes in the stands and chants of “we are staying up”.

Portsmouth climbed to 19th place courtesy of a first home win in six outings ahead of hosting second-bottom Leicester on Saturday.

“It’s still incredibly tight and incredibly tough,” said Mousinho. “The margins in the game are incredible.”

Second-placed Ipswich remain two points above third-placed Millwall, with a game in hand, after slipping to a surprise first defeat in 10 matches.

Following the euphoria of Saturday’s 2-0 derby victory at Norwich, the Tractor Boys created little on the south coast.

Town boss Kieran McKenna said: “If you concede the first goal from a set-play at this stadium with the atmosphere as it was tonight it’s always going to be tough, and to do it just before half-time was a blow.

“We’re really disappointed with that goal and then to concede probably a minute later, if you take the celebrations out of it, that killed the game for us.

“That’s really the key couple of minutes in the game. Before that, we would have liked to play a bit better in terms of creating chances but it was always going to be a tough night.

“If we get to half-time at 0-0 it’s probably been a pretty steady first half and we’re in a position to push on.

“But you let the game go like that in a couple of minutes before half-time, a really difficult game becomes not impossible but much, much, much more challenging.

“You would have to do fantastically well in that second half to turn it around, and we didn’t manage to do that.”