Vitor Matos praises Swansea City control in Portsmouth win

Head coach Vitor Matos praised the control his Swansea City side showed with and without the ball as they picked up a 2-1 victory on their travels at Portsmouth.

Excellent first-half goals from Ethan Galbraith and Josh Key put the visitors firmly in command at Fratton Park, having used an aggressive pressing display as the basis to keep their hosts at arm’s length while posing attacking questions of their own.

Galbraith hammered home a fine strike after excellent distribution from Lawrence Vigouroux had started a flowing attack, while Ronald set up Key to send a looping strike into the far corner of the net.

Jacob Brown pulled a goal back for the home side with 26 minutes to go, and Portsmouth piled on the pressure in search of an equaliser, but Swansea defended resiliently to pick up the three points.

“We knew this would be a very tough game because of the intensity Portsmouth put in, the amount of long balls and crosses they put in on a narrow pitch,” said Matos.

“So we knew we needed to show concentration, which we did in the first half. We had very good intensity, our pressing was there, and we had control in the right moment and could find the passes that allowed us to get into the right positions.

“From that game, we got the two situations for the goals. They were very good goals as well, I was really pleased for Gally and Josh to score.

“Of course, the control we had defensively was very important as well. The back four, the centre-halves, were unbelievable.

“Credit to them, they were able to control the space in behind, putting pressure and then controlling the space in behind. 

“We also had a big impact from the bench as that is what will make us stronger and make us more competitive.

“We knew it would be massive in the first half if we could have control in the game, we needed to make sure not to open the spaces between the lines and control the spaces out wide because Portsmouth like to use those situations.”