Vitor Matos | We need to learn from this and improve

Head coach Vitor Matos says his Swansea City need to learn the lessons from their defeat at Portsmouth after two late goals condemned them to a 3-1 loss at Fratton Park.

Having trailed to a Terry Devlin strike at the interval, the visitors had the better of the second half and claimed an equaliser when Zan Vipotnik converted from the penalty spot.

The Swans then hit the crossbar through Ross Stewart as they went in search of a winner, but instead were dealt a double blow in stoppage time as Devlin got his second of the night from a half-cleared corner, before Thomas Waddingham added a third.

“This is a hard place to come, and you know they will be really physical, really direct, really vertical in how they play,” said Matos.

“Sometimes it is a bit extreme, but it is down to the referee to manage this and we tried to compete.

“We found it very hard to force Portsmouth deep in the first half with their long balls, we conceded the goal and then we started trying to chase the game.

“I thought in the second half we did really well. We created chances, we got the goal through the penalty and in that period it looked like the game would turn to us.

“We were on top in the game, but then we concede a goal from a set-piece which is something we need to learn from and improve.

“When you want to grow as a team you need to handle these situations, we know what we need to do better and make sure we stay in control and balanced in the games.

“It’s not easy, because we are human beings, but we need to get ourselves ready to go again at Birmingham on Saturday.”

Matos also confirmed Stephen Welsh will need to undergo a scan after the Scotland defender was forced off during the first half after being injured by a late challenge from Ebou Adams.

“Stephen has suffered something on his knee,” he said.

“We will need to assess him before we can understand the extent and the gravity of the situation.

“We will wait and see what the answer is there, we also had a couple of knocks which limited the availability of some players so we will now need to assess them.”