Pompey skipper Michael Doyel has given an honest assessment of the team's bad day at the office against Leyton Orient - and he wants everyone to focus on a game at a time to get the Blues moving in the right direction again.

The 1-0 home loss to the east Londoners left Pompey seventh in the table and further than ever from the top three. But Doyle says promotion is still the end aim - even if it should not be at the centre of the players' thoughts right now.

He told The News: 'It’s a 50-game season and unfortunately you are not going to be at your best for all those matches. You are going to have days like Saturday which none of us like.

‘The fans don’t like it, as players we certainly don’t like it, but you have just got to show your character now. You need to pick yourself up and make sure you are ready to go next week because it makes the game a lot bigger than it already was.

‘I don’t think we can have any complaints about Saturday. They had some chances to kill the game off and in the second half when the onus was on us we didn’t look like scoring.

‘As a squad we are well aware recent results haven’t gone our way and have kind of tailed off. Pretty obviously we were looking for automatic promotion and now are making it really difficult for ourselves.

‘I think right now all talk like that has to be put on the backburner, you have to make sure to win your next game and get out of this rut. This whole week now from today is about performance and training, making sure you bring that performance into the Bristol Rovers game and whatever you have got on your shoulders leave it behind.

‘It’s about how you react to it and that is what’s going to be important now. If we show the character to get ourselves up the table next week it can go a long way in having a say in whether we get promoted.’

Next up at Fratton are Bristol Rovers and they are akready talking up what they see as a chance to put Pompey under pressure in front of the Fratton fans.

Defender Lee Brown told the Bristol Post the Blues' 'fantastic' support can work against them. 'I've seen it happen to us at the Memorial Stadium at times during my five years at Bristol Rovers. A lot of teams will go to places like ours or Portsmouth and set up to frustrate you,' he said.

'If they are successful in doing that the crowd can quickly turn because the expectation for a club like Portsmouth is to win every game in League Two. If you are winning in front of 15,000 supporters the place will be rocking, but if it turns it can be difficult and that is something that we will be trying to exploit at Fratton Park on Saturday.'

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