Portsmouth boss Steve Cotterill praised his players for their character after they secured their third consecutive league victory with a 2-1 success at Hull. Cotterill said after the npower Championship contest: "It's been a difficult four months.

"The last 24 hours have compounded it a bit, but maybe that might get sorted. Thankfully, we can only concentrate on the football.

"I don't want to be a hero or a martyr because the players are pretty good.

"They're a solid bunch of lads. If it wasn't for the character of the players and how they are, my job might have been a bit more difficult.

"The players have heard all this before for the last 18 months. They've been banged on the head and things have been said about the club.

"But this is a proper football club with proper fans - not plastic fans - and proper people working in it.

"At the hotel the night before the game I asked the players if they were all in. If not, they needn't stay for their dinner and we'd make sure we took them back home.

"They all sat down and we all ate together. There were a few worried people. Some of the people that have been here last season might be battle-hardened to it.

"Some of the new lads were perhaps wondering where they were and took a bit more settling down than the ones who have been here a while.

"We agreed that for the sake of our fans, Hull City and football, even if something was going to happen to our club overnight, we had a duty to turn up and play the game.

"It was easy to screw up all the politics and throw that in the bin and get on with the football.

"It has been difficult. It was quite big news last night. There were a lot of people worried about their careers. Not just players, but people like our media guys, masseurs and coaches.

"It's a great club. It's got into bad waters through its own fault. We got into this situation, it's no-one else's fault. But we would like a break and we would like a go at getting out of it.

"That's not going to happen overnight. We are trying to do it properly, but I think a lot of neutrals are rooting for us."

Hull counterpart Nigel Pearson struggled to find the positives as his side suffered their second home defeat in the space of a week.

"There were some good things but we conceded two poor goals and it was another defeat.

"We lost a game that we shouldn't have lost, like the other night (against Sheffield United). We've had two games at home that we shouldn't have lost.

"I don't think the other side were particularly better than us."