Cotterill: We still need more players

Steve Cotterill admitted he needs reinforcements to sustain Portsmouth's promotion bid after their 2-1 home win over Nottingham Forest. Liam Lawrence scored the second-half winner after Forest's Paul Anderson had equalised Ibrahima Sonko's header in the opening period.The win was Pompey's fourth in a row which extends their unbeaten run to seven games, a run which has lifted them to 10th place in the Championship and just one point off the play-off places.Cotterill said: "If we want to be up and around there, we can't run with the squad we've got."We had a bench today with Richard Hughes, who hasn't trained all week. We had Hermann Hreidarsson who hadn't played for six months. He went on and made a cameo at the end."We need fit boys who can come on and change a game."Look at their substitutes. It's not just (Robert) Earnshaw; they had (Dexter) Blackstock too. You'd be in your element if you had a bench like they had."I don't mean that to put our players down. But they had top Championship players on their bench."On Sonko he added: "I thought Ibrahima Sonko was outstanding. I thought he was absolutely magnificent. If anybody gives him a nine out of 10 - they're wrong. He deserves a 10."He capped it with a goal and I was chuffed to bits for him. I'm really, really pleased and the lads were all over him as well."He has been left out of the team, he has come back, but when he was out of the team, he was so supportive."He's not the silkiest footballer; we all know that. But I'll tell you what, he has a heart the size of a lion. If we hadn't had him, we could have gone under when there were five of them up against our back four."Nottingham Forest boss Billy Davies has called on his players to learn from the way Portsmouth play to improve their game.Davies said: "When you look at the game, what we need to learn here is that maybe we should look to take a leaf out of their (Portsmouth's) book and the way in which they play."We want to play the Forest way and we did play some wonderful football during periods of the game."But we lost soft goals. We had a huge amount of chances to get back into the game, go in front and score goals."The bottom line is we came here against a side which has some physical presence, they compete very well and they have huge experience of Premier League football."They have an enormous budget in comparison to us, but I think that's as good a test as they will get all season."We tried to go for it with (Robert) Earnshaw, (Dexter) Blackstock and (Dele) Adebola."We pinned them and we had chances, but to lose to a corner kick we had been working on for three days is very disappointing. The second goal was extremely soft again."For weeks and weeks and weeks, anybody who has watched us would say we are playing well."We're young and we're immature at times. We're still not realising how to play and grind out results. That's the part we've got to learn."

Source: Team_Talk