Paul Cook says Pompey have the players who can break down Crawley - even if they are as defensive as they were in the teams' first meeting this season.

Town went all out for the 0-0 draw at home in August - and they achieved just that. But the Pompey boss says his team have become better at dealing with that sort of obstacle in their way.

Ahead of Crawley becoming Pompey's first opponents of the new year on Saturday, Cook told The News: ‘We’ve got a lot more cutting edge now. You only have to look at training yesterday to realise that. We’ve got a lot of tools now we didn’t have earlier in the season.

‘That’s why Luton did well to go away with a 0-0. Fair play to them for doing that. They deserved to get a 0-0 by how hard they worked. Though, on another day, we would have put them away.

‘Crawley have had a good season. In my opinion they could come here and have a free hit. If they want to be defensive that’s Mark (Yates’) decision. Or he could come down and see us as a scalp. Whatever happens, happens, but they’ve had a good season regardless from where they were.’

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