Cotterill: We Deserved Win Against Swansea City

Portsmouth boss Steve Cotterill said his side deserved the 2-1 victory against Swansea City at the Liberty Stadium last night.

Craig Beattie put us in front after just 2 minutes, and we were on top for the next 30 minutes or so, but we let Pompey back into the game as they got an equaliser just before half time.

Swansea’s early dominance should have given us a bigger lead at the break, but instead we were level and the opposition came out in the second half with a boost in confidence after scoring.

Cotterill admitted that he did more homework on the Swans than any other opposition:

“A big thanks to the fans for travelling so far to watch us in such bad weather,”

“When you go a goal down at Swansea you can end up getting beaten by four or five. But we didn`t do that, we wore them down and won the game by being disciplined against a team who get a lot of the ball.

“We did a lot of work on Swansea, perhaps more than we`ve had to do on any other team. We were playing a team who could have gone joint-second in the table and who had conceded just two goals at home.

“It didn`t help in the first two minutes when we went behind, but the flip side of that was that we showed such character to come back and win.

“We got our equaliser at the right time, just before half-time, and in the second half created several good chances and scored the second goal that gave us a big lift.

“I said to the lads at half-time that we could win the game. The lads were brilliant. Towards the end we had seen off their threat.

“In truth, after the first couple of minutes, there wasn`t a lot wrong with us. We restricted Swansea to very little on their patch.

“There were a few things we thought we might be able to do, and Nuge`s goal worked perfectly for us. It was a good finish by Nuge, who is nice and confident at the moment, scoring goals.

“I thought Dave Kitson was excellent tonight, especially in the first half. He worked really, really hard and the goals will come for him.

“There`s a good mood in the dressing room. We were disappointed with our performance at Barnsley, but we felt we deserved to win against Doncaster and QPR. We deserved to win against Swansea too, but this time we got the three points.”