Pulis - We were nervous

Tony Pulis put Stoke's poor first-half performance against Portsmouth at the Britannia Stadium on Sunday down to nerves.

The Potters secured their first win in the Premier League for nearly a month thanks to Ricardo Fuller's first Premier League goal of the season after 74 minutes.

Despite coming away with nothing, Pompey will be proud of how they performed and created the games most clear-cut chances when the scores were still deadlocked at 0-0.

However, having seen goalkeeper Thomas Sorensen save a penalty from Kevin Prince Boateng in the eighth minute, the hosts gathered themselves in the second-half and put in a much improved showing.

"I thought first-half that was as poor as we have played especially at home," Pulis told Sky Sports.

"Thomas kept us in the game with the save. We never really caused them problems but if you look at the game I think they only had two shots on target as well and one was the penalty and although they played some good stuff they never got in behind us and caused us too much problems.

"(I think we were) nervous as much as anything else although it was difficult conditions.

"We played really, really well against Wolves (last home game) in the first-half going in 2-0 up and then second-half we conceded two goals and then we went to Hull and got beat, so that was a blow for us, and they were a little bit on the back foot, but second half we were better."

Having finally got off the mark in the league this term Pulis backed Fuller to now go on a goalscoring streak.

"It was a good goal," he added. "It was the first time we got good movement but Ric's a very streaky player, he could go on now to score nine goals in the next 10 games."