Steve Cotterill is working to turn around the negative atmosphere at Portsmouth after a second consecutive victory against Bristol City. Cotterill said: "I am one of those positive people and the more negativity that surrounds me, the more I want to fight it.

"When you say things in the press, you offend someone somewhere down the line. If you tell the whole truth, you offend the players, the supporters or the chairman and directors.

"So what I had to do this season was come in and feed you guys a lot of bull - tell you everything, but tell you nothing.

"We had to stay positive because there was too much negativity around this football club.

"Someone somewhere had to start going the other way and I suppose I took that responsibility of trying to change it.

"Bad news always travels fast. Good news travels much steadier. Hopefully we can have some steadier news on a more regular basis now."

Cotterill cited his side's improved fitness as being key to their back-to-back wins.

He added: "We did a lot of fitness work in the international break that we weren't able to do before because, as I've said, pre-season here was an absolute joke.

"It was a joke - it will never ever happen here again while I'm manager.

"We will never be as unfit going into the first game as we were against Coventry. We had 35 minutes in us - that was us. After that we were cooked. We had nothing else. If the lads are reading this, they had better get their running shoes on next July."