In a stunning turn of events, Portsmouth scored the only goal of the match seven minutes into stoppage time, giving their Championship survival aspirations a massive lift while inflicting considerable damage on Middlesbrough's rapidly diminishing automatic promotion chances. The visitors failed to register a shot on target until Andre Dozzell's volley deflected in off Conor Chaplin in the dying seconds, bringing an end to an eight-game winless streak for John Mousinho's side. Middlesbrough are now without a win in six matches and trail second-placed Ipswich, who have two games in hand, by three points after Kieran McKenna's team secured a victory at Norwich earlier in the day.
Portsmouth appeared destined to drop into the relegation zone until Chaplin's decisive strike, which keeps Mousinho's team a point and a place above the bottom three. Despite dominating possession, Middlesbrough had 20 shots compared to Portsmouth's three, but they have now scored just four goals in their last six games, with two of those coming in Monday's draw at Swansea.
Kim Hellberg's side began brightly, with Alan Browne forcing a fine early save from Nicolas Schmid after being set up by Jeremy Sarmiento. From the resulting corner, center-back Adilson Malanda had a shot deflected onto the roof of the net. For all Middlesbrough's dominance in the opening 45 minutes, they struggled to create meaningful opportunities, with Browne's effort being the home side's only shot on target until Dael Fry's close-range header was saved by Schmid in the final minute of the first half.
Middlesbrough could have taken the lead two minutes into the second half when David Strelec split the Portsmouth defense with a through-ball, but Schmid denied Riley McGree with his feet. The home side then had a glorious chance to break the deadlock when Tommy Conway robbed Regan Poole of possession midway inside the Portsmouth half, sparking a two-on-one attack.
Rather than shooting, Conway opted to try and set up strike partner Strelec, but his pass was intercepted by Madiodio Dia, the only covering defender, and Poole then recovered to block the rebound from McGree. Conway again chose to pass rather than shoot when he had another opportunity soon after, and this time his attempted through-ball for McGree bounced off defender Jordan Williams and rolled agonizingly wide of Schmid's left post.
Portsmouth launched a rare attack at the midway stage of the second half, and Terry Devlin picked out Colby Bishop, but the striker's audacious flick went wide. Middlesbrough very nearly forced a breakthrough in added time, but half-time substitute Sontje Hansen saw his shot cleared off the line by Dozzell.
Portsmouth then won a corner at the other end, and Fry's headed clearance only reached Dozzell, whose first-time strike deflected in off his teammate. Middlesbrough's Kim Hellberg expressed his disappointment, stating, 'I'm disappointed, devastated.
The performance was poor, actually. First half was terrible. It was like watching paint dry. I don't know why, I must have failed with everything I told them before the game because we weren't good enough.' Portsmouth's John Mousinho praised his team's result, saying, 'It's an amazing result at this stage of the season.
It's all about picking up points, and we managed to do that. If you're asking me about the result in isolation, we've come here to hopefully win the game, and we've managed to do that in those circumstances, which was different to what we've been doing in recent weeks. It's a brilliant three points for us.'