
The Stoke manager also acknowledged that his team couldn’t handle the Blues’ aggressiveness, as they exacted revenge for their 6-1 loss in the match last October.
Last night, John Mousinho’s team defeated PO4 3-1, earning them a perfect seven-game winning streak with 19 points from 21 games.
Pomoey’s explosive start was too much for Stoke to handle, and Robins admitted as much, believing his opponents “manned” his squad beyond the rules of the game to snap their five-game winning streak.
Robins expressed his disappointment to the Stoke Sentinel. We couldn’t cope with the tone they set from the beginning. We let them harass us all night long.
I thought it was a fairly soft penalty that gave them the first. He gave him a penalty, even though I didn’t believe he would for a split second. But if you have hands on your back, I guess that’s what it is.
“Let’s get it right; they’ve laid out their stall.” Because it’s all black arts, they’ve kicked us, thrown themselves on the ground, and fouled us, yet we’ve had nothing.
Tonight, they have all manned us. People don’t understand what that means, but they’ve got players who’ve experienced the other side of the game because they’ve come through a different route I suppose.
‘Colby Bishop, for instance, starting goal side of our defenders when the ball gets kicked, he just runs backs and blocks them for other runners going through. We’ve got understand it.
It’s old school, that’s old school football and you’ve got to be able to deal with it and not just think teams are going to allow you to come and play.’
Pompey put in a lot of effort with their pressing and recovery runs, and their sustained intensity throughout the match was a defining feature of their victory.

Robins added: ‘It’s really disappointing because all they did was run harder, they run harder to get in behind, they run harder to get into positions to try to put your under pressure.
That’s how this team puts you under pressure. That’s what they are, how they’ve been built.
‘We can show them everything we want to beforehand and if it still surprises you on the night then you’re not going to get anything from the game. That’s what happened.
‘We found ourselves a goal down from the penalty and then a punt down the middle, we allow it bounce and they get their first. It’s really poor.
The goal we scored was a really well-worked goal but we didn’t look like we were going to score after that and that’s another disappointment.
We got into decent positions from time to time, got to the edge of the box, transferred the ball onto the shooting foot – I’m thinking of Lewis Baker’s chance – worked it really well but needed to get a shot away quicker. They are throwing bodies in and doing it all night.