Portsmouth 0 Middlesbrough 0: Boro are still facing a scrap for survival concedes Mowbray

He said: “I think we saw on Tuesday night that the commitment to the cause is there, and the desire to go and turn around the five goals we lost at Reading last week.

“Sometimes football teams have to come and grind out results like that, particularly when we are at the bottom. The players will take a lot of confidence from the fact they could do that.

“I just felt the attitude of the team was right. We lost some early goals last week and the heads went down.

“This week we were always in the football match and (Marvin) Emnes could have won it late on when he went through one-on-one and the keeper made a decent save.

“The crossbar saved us in the first half from Hermann Hreidarsson’s header and Seb (Hines) cleared one off the line. But apart from that, we didn’t really get threatened.”

Asked if the seven-point gap between Middlesbrough and the drop zone is enough, Mowbray added: “We’ve been seven clear before and then you lose a game, everyone below you wins and all of a sudden it’s four.

“We have to find the consistency like Portsmouth did. They won six on the bounce and they were talking in their programme about getting into the play-offs.

“If we can win three on the bounce somewhere down the line, we’ll be fine, but we’ll have to scrap our way out of it. And that means coming to places like this, being hard to play against and being hard to beat.”

David Nugent, Joel Ward and Dave Kitson missed decent chances for Portsmouth and Barry Robson and substitute Emnes went close for Boro.

Portsmouth: Ashdown, De Laet, Halford, Rocha, Hreidarsson, Cotterill (Kanu 69), Mullins, Hogg, Nugent, Ward (Lawrence 59), Kitson. Unused substitutes: Flahavan, Dickinson, Mokoena, Ciftci, Kilbey

Middlesbrough: Smith, McMahon, Hines, Rhys Williams, Bennett, Robson, Bailey, Smallwood, Taylor, McDonald (Emnes 61), Lita (Zemmama 67). Unused substitutes: Ripley, Haas, McManus, Kink, Tavares.

Referee: P Crossley (Kent).

Man of the match: Seb Hines.