Proud Neil Critchley reflects on a huge three points for in-form Blackpool at Portsmouth

Jerry Yates struck eight minutes from time to help Blackpool continue their good form, winning their fourth game from their last five outings.

There wasn’t a great deal to split the two teams in what was a scrappy affair low on quality, but the Seasiders held firm to claim an impressive clean sheet - completing a league double over Kenny Jackett’s side in the process.

“I’m really proud of the team’s performance,” Critchley said.

“You know coming to Portsmouth you’re going to come up against a proper team and anything that you get is going to be well-earned and I thought it was a well-earned victory.

“We limited them to very little, maybe they just had that one incident in the first-half, but other than that Maxi (Chris Maxwell) has had nothing to do.

“The longer the game went on and the more the game opened up, I thought we looked the most likely to score, even though there weren’t many chances at either end.

“But a moment of quality has won it for us.”

A lot of sides would be happy to settle for a goalless draw at Fratton Park, but that was never going to be the case with the Seasiders - something Critchley was keen to stress.

“That’s the mentality we want to try and develop, we want to be Blackpool home and away: ‘this is us, this is our identity and we always play to win’,” Pool’s head coach added.

“We don’t come here settling for a point, we want to go and try and win the game and be positive. We believe in ourselves and today we’ve got the rewards for that.

“I didn’t feel in any danger after we scored. They obviously started to hit a few more longer balls and began to commit more bodies forward.

“But we stood up to that extremely well. We stayed out of the penalty box, we didn’t drop deep and we protected Maxi really well.

“As a team I couldn’t have been happier with our defensive display.”

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