Pompey sit seven points clear of Leicester City ahead of Saturday’s huge survival showdown at Fratton Park.
Pompey have the potential to ‘kill’ Leicester City and their survival hopes in Saturday’s huge relegation showdown.
The Foxes make the trip to the south coast sitting 23rd, five points from safety, and are staring down the barrel of back-to-back relegations having won just one of their previous 16 league matches.
After the Blues’ brilliant midweek success over Ipswich, Maxwell is fearing the worst for Gary Rowett’s side in their must-win game at PO4.
And the NTT20 co-host believes Mousinho’s troops have the mindset and gritty mentality to pull away from the relegation battle at the crucial time of the season.
EFL experts suggest Pompey can ‘kill’ struggling Leicester
Pompey sit four points clear of the relegation zone.placeholder image
Pompey sit four points clear of the relegation zone. | Getty Images
Speaking on the latest episode, he said: ‘The match situation is delightful for the neutral. Portsmouth are 19th on 48 points and Leicester are 23rd on 41 points. Leicester and Portsmouth both have four games left to play, three after this.
‘That means if Portsmouth win, Leicester can not catch them so there would only be one remaining relegation spot that Pompey could feasibly drop into.
‘A draw wouldn’t be great for either side but obviously worse for Leicester. I think with Pompey’s next two games away to Coventry and Stoke, they’ll be extra keen to get to 51 here and essentially kill one of the teams that could catch them.
‘In terms of me backing Portsmouth to win, I’ve got to be honest and say much of this is down to watching them play at home to Ipswich and beat the team, who were in the driving seat for second spot and automatic promotion, by two goals to nil and completely deserving it and being the miles better side at 0-0.
‘They were so impressive and a lot of what they do, they do in every game. The intensity, the aggression, the press, the speed in which they play, the directness and when they win you raise it as something excellent that was impossible for the opposition to handle, which was the case in the first half.
‘But I was thinking back to the game against Derby, which they lost during their terrible run recently, where they were playing too fast, couldn’t settle down, couldn’t put their foot on the ball because they were so gung-ho and helter-skelter. That was framed like a problem.
‘It’s funny how outcomes make such a big difference to how you look at things, even if they play anything like they played on Tuesday night at home to Leicester on Saturday, then I’d be very confident Leicester will struggle to handle that. Just like Ipswich – a significantly better side – struggled to handle it.
‘This is a group of intangibles that I would list as confidence, togetherness, desire, intensity, aggression. All of those things are great to have in a relegation battle and really bad if you’re missing those things.
‘I think Portsmouth showed all of them in midweek and most of them in beating Boro last weekend.
‘They’re not a team whose mentality I would worry about, that’s not just based on the last two games, that’s based on three years of Portsmouth under Mousinho.
‘The mentality that they showed to get up from League One, the mentality they showed to stay up, the mentality they’ve all had to show by sticking together rather than throwing their toys out of the pram and sacking people when they’ve gone through extended poor runs at Championship level.
‘I think that helps in these moments in the final weeks of the season, they’ve got the home advantage, the home atmosphere should be massive here.
‘Leicester’s last away win was on the sixth of December, seven draws and four defeats in their last 11.
‘They’re lacking a lot of the things that I just listed that I think Portsmouth have that I think are really important.’
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