STUART PEARCE APOLOGISED TO Alain Perrin and Joe Jordan at half-time. He had outraged the Portsmouth manager and coach when, in the 25th minute, he prevented Matthew Taylor from taking a throw-in on the touchline by standing in front of the Portsmouth defender and ordering him to move back a few yards to where he thought the ball had gone out of play.

It was not Pearce’s job to do, as Perrin and Jordan made abundantly clear during an angry exchange of expletives, but it was a moment that typified the kind of mentality the Manchester City caretaker manager is trying to instil in his players.

“Under me,” Pearce seems to be saying, “you will fight for everything, no matter how small or seemingly irrelevant, and if at times I need to remind you of that, I will not hesitate to do so.”

Goals from Sylvain Distin and Robbie Fowler extended City’s unbeaten run to six games — their best sequence of results in the Premiership for 11 years — and have, incredibly, renewed hope of European qualification. Wins against Aston Villa and Middlesbrough in their remaining two games should be enough to bring Uefa Cup football to the City of Manchester Stadium next season.

“It would be easy for me to quash talk of Europe and say we are taking one game at a time, but why not put some pressure on ourselves?” Pearce said. “If we win our last two games we could end up in Europe next season. Maybe we have accepted ‘what if?’ at this football club for too long?”

Despite defeat, Portsmouth are now safe, but for the most part on Saturday they looked like a team that belongs in the Coca-Cola Championship. Jamie Ashdown, the goalkeeper, was especially culpable against a City side that should have won at a canter but failed to add to the two goals they plundered in the opening 16 minutes.

Richard Dunne should not have beaten Ashdown to Fowler’s corner, but, in doing so,allowed Distin to send a looping header over Taylor and into the net. Fowler then added a second when he curled a delicious free-kick beyond Ashdown after Shaun Wright-Phillips had been rather contentiously upended by Richard Hughes. Replays showed the Portsmouth player had taken the ball before the man, but Perrin could have little cause for complaint so feeble was his team.

Alex Rodic squandered a glorious opportunity to pull a goal back for the visiting team when his shot from six yards was blocked by the knees of Ben Thatcher, but City would have been out of sight if Claudio Reyna, Joey Barton and Antoine Sibierski had not been so wasteful. For Pearce, it is now only a case of when, rather than if, he is offered the manager’s job on a permanent basis.