On Tuesday night, Matt Ritchie attacked his Portsmouth teammates, saying they “have to look internally” for solutions to their issues.

His critical evaluation followed a 1-0 loss to fellow struggling Plymouth Argyle, as Michael Obafemi’s late goal proved to be the game-winning goal.

After 14 games, that loss puts Portsmouth at the bottom of the Championship, and they must turn things around quickly to avoid being sent straight back to League One.

Although it was generally expected that Pompey would be the best of the promoted teams this season, they have actually failed to adjust to this level, thus it has been quite the contrary.

With Portsmouth having previously faced several of the early pace-setters, the fixture gremlins presented a number of challenging assignments at the beginning of the season.

However, it is concerning that John Mousinho’s team has not improved after believing that things will improve with games against teams like Plymouth coming up.

Ritchie pulled no punches in his assessment

Ritchie, who played at the highest level for large portions of his career and should have some idea of what constitutes a winning squad, is undoubtedly concerned.

Although Ritchie, who began his career with Pompey, has returned to assist them fight against the drop, he emphasised that following Tuesday’s below-par performance, his colleagues should examine themselves before coming up with a plan to stay in the division.

“It’s a bitter pill to swallow but ultimately we have to be better,” Ritchie replied.

“We need to improve, but I felt we were good and the performance was there.

“We created opportunities we couldn’t seize. Since they had few options, they took a chance. That’s the

“I thought we did a great job, but we didn’t do enough to win the game, so we need to improve and do better.

We must delve more and uncover more. We must examine ourselves in order to see where we can make improvements and what we can do better. We must increase the bar and accomplish that together.

“The league is the league; we must adapt for the league; it won’t change for us.

“In both areas, we must be more ruthless and clinical. We must elevate the bar.

Ritchie’s claims certainly have substance

Although Ritchie’s assertions that Tuesday’s performance was strong have some merit, John Mousinho is in the business of results, and at the moment, he isn’t getting them.

Despite all of the “front-foot” play Ritchie mentioned on Tuesday night, Pompey produced very little, according to the statistics, and this has been an issue for them the entire season.

This season, they are giving up nearly two goals per game, which makes it clear they can’t keep the ball out the other end. If they could, their average of less than one goal per game would be tolerable.

Ritchie has called for greater “quality” from his teammates, which may be explained by the fact that Portsmouth is near the bottom of almost every attacking metric in the Championship.

He has asked his teammates to “raise the bar” as well, and they have the ideal opportunity to prove to him that they can do so when they host fellow struggling players Preston on Saturday.