Leeds United fans won’t want to hear John Mousinho’s verdict on penalty incident in Portsmouth defeat

Add as preferred source on Google

Portsmouth manager John Mousinho has given his verdict on whether Leeds United should have been awarded a penalty in their fixture.

Leeds United suffered their first loss since November on Sunday when they slipped to a 1-0 defeat at Portsmouth.

Colby Bishop scored the opening goal when he took advantage of some Illan Meslier hesitation to loft the ball into the net.

Bishop was clinical when given an opening, the exact opposite of Joel Piroe, who missed two glorious chances to put Leeds ahead.

Daniel Farke will also be rueing that his side were not handed a clear penalty in the first half when Dan James was upended by Matt Ritchie.

Neil Warnock was furious with referee Rob Jones for not giving it, while commentators Lucy Ward and Lee Hendrie were baffled.

Even Pompey manager John Mousinho has admitted his side were lucky.

Portsmouth manager admits it was a penalty vs Leeds

Speaking to Sky Sports after the game, Mousinho admitted his side got lucky when the penalty wasn’t given against Pompey.

He said: “I think at the time I thought Matty had won the ball.

“I think in all honesty, I won’t hide behind it, I’m not sure he did. If it’s one of those we’ve got away with, we’ve got away with it.

“We’ve been on the end of plenty of decisions that I don’t think have gone our way as well, so sometimes you need that.

“When you’re down at the bottom, often you don’t get those decisions and we haven’t for large parts of the season.

“So I’ll be honest about it, if it’s a penalty, it’s a penalty. We’ve got away with one. We have to ride our luck and move on.”

Leeds fans will be even more annoyed they weren’t given a penalty so obvious that even the benefitting manager can’t deny his side were fortunate.

It’s time for Daniel Farke to change up his side

Other than dealing with injuries or rotating between Joe Rothwell and Ilia Gruev, Farke has not made many changes to his strongest XI for months.

While that consistency has paid off with a long undefeated streak, it’s now clear that a lot of players are running on fumes.

Brenden Aaronson, Ao Tanaka and James all put in tired displays against Portsmouth and some changes will have to be made in Wednesday’s fixture against Millwall.

Leeds have great strength in depth so why not use it? Largie Ramazani and Willy Gnonto should both come in at a minimum because Leeds can not afford any more slips.