Danny Cowley felt Pompey showed two sides to their game in winning 2-1 at Shrewsbury.

Goals by Marcus Harness and John Marquis put them in control by the break - before the Sherews halved the deficit and Marquis was sent off to leave the Blues relieved to see it out, although they did that without any major scares at the back.

Cowley stopped short of describing it as a game of two halves but said: 'It was a really good performance in the first half and credit to the players because we’ve given them an awful lot of information this week. They were able to digest that and implement it, which isn’t easy. But we played with a nice rhythm and were able to dominate.

'Shrewsbury changed their system after the break and we didn’t have the answers to that, so didn’t have quite the same level of control. But we’ve just come together as a group and when we’re next in that moment, we’ll be able to respond better.

'So instead we had to show the other side of the game, which is the grit, determination and resilience. We had that in abundance. We finished the game with 10, but it felt more like we had 12 players with the energy of Ryan and Marcus.

'If you want to be a successful team, you have to win in different ways. It would be great if we could do that by playing like we did in the first half. If you can’t then you have to dig deep.'

Cowley implied the club would appeal against the red card shown to Marquis for a foul that most thought was clumsy rather than malicious.

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