John Mousinho refuses to blame goalkeeper for dropped points at Watford

Portsmouth head coach John Mousinho refused to blame goalkeeper Nicolas Schmid for the error that forced his side to settle for a point from a 1-1 draw at Watford.

That was enough to lift Pompey out of the relegation places but Mousinho had been hoping for all three points when Adrian Segecic broke the deadlock in the 73rd minute.

Austrian Schmid was at fault when substitute Mamadou Doumbia levelled six minutes later. The goalkeeper dropped a cross into the box as Luca Kjerrumgaard challenged, allowing his team-mate to cash in.

“I thought the performance was superb for the full 90 minutes, the only disappointment was that we didn’t win it,” said Mousinho. “We deserved to go ahead so conceding the goal in the manner we did was a disappointment

“It is just an error. We have made plenty of poor decisions and been defensively poor at times this season and deserved to concede goals.

“I didn’t think we deserved to concede tonight and one thing is for sure – Nico is going to help us out and save us this season far more times than he makes errors.

“It is very rare  – almost a collector’s item for him to do that – so we take it and move on because he has been superb.

“He just went up in difficult conditions and dropped the ball. Maybe he took his eye of it for a second. It is one of those things, all of the players out there make mistakes, it is just amplified when you are the goalkeeper.”

Having won 1-0 at Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, Portsmouth had been hopeful of recording back-to-back victories ahead of this weekend’s south-coast derby with Southampton.

Watford, who moved up to seventh, also lost last weekend, 2-0 at home to Millwall, a result that followed a 5-1 FA Cup thrashing at Bristol City.

Head coach Javi Gracia had been expecting a reaction from his players – and was angry that he didn’t get one.

“I’m very upset and disappointed not just because of the result but the way we performed from the first minutes,” he said.

“After two bad results in the FA Cup and in our last home game I expected a reaction.

“I don’t recognise my team. At other times I’ve told you that we were going the right way and working well. Now it is not the right way. It’s the wrong way.

“Our supporters could see we were playing too much in our own half and never trying to attack the spaces. That is not the attitude.

“We are competing against teams with more experience and who are more organised. We can’t get the results we expect playing like this.

“Today defensively we were well organised in the first half but offensively it was a disaster from the first minute.

“After losing our last home game, and now this performance, we need to do something quickly.”