United captain Paul Thirlwell spoke to us after the Portsmouth game on Tuesday night to give his reaction to the team performance.

He said: "The lads put a good shift in, and I think that's rightly so on the back of what happened last Saturday when we didn't produce or play as we normally can.

"We certainly brought a bit of pride back for ourselves and for the fans, despite the result, because of the type of performance that we gave. We couldn't have tried any harder and we can take a heck of a lot of positives out of it as we go into the Southampton game at the weekend."

"We started the game really well and Joe did what he does best when he got in front of the defender," he added. "He used his strength and that got us a penalty, and nine times out of ten you can rely on Ian Harte to put them away. He did that and we were able to go on from there and press forward."

"Unfortunately we were up against a quality side and we were caught by the old sucker punch a couple of times. However, we do have plenty that we can take out of a game like that. We came out of the traps after the goal really well, and I think that was the case from start to finish. They had a couple of spells where they took the sting out of it and where they got the ball down and came at us, but we definitely didn't make it a comfortable night for them.T hey were difficult to defend against when they got their passing going, but you would expect that from players of that quality."

United Player subscribers can see a full interview with Paul Thirlwell later this week. For more details on United Player, click HERE.