Portsmouth captain Arjan de Zeeuw insists he and his teammates must concentrate on their game when they take on Watford in the Carling Cup quarter-final on Tuesday night - as the fall-out from manager Harry Redknapp's Fratton Park exit continues to rumble on.

Just a few hours after a press conference is planned for Redknapp and Pompey chairman Milan Mandaric, de Zeeuw's braves try to rack up their second away win in four days. This time they are facing the only non-Barclays Premiership team left in the competition and de Zeeuw, who was the victim of an alleged spitting attack by Bolton's El-Hadji Diouf on Saturday, said: "It is some time since we came this far in the League Cup and we want to move on.

"Arsenal knocked us out in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup last season, they thrashed us actually, but we showed on Saturday at Bolton that we can stand up to a fight and that is what we expect at Vicarage Road."

Pompey's single-goal triumph at Bolton came just three days after Redknapp and assistant manager Jim Smith quit the club following Mandaric's recruitment of former Panathinaikos technical director Velimir Zajec in a similar capacity at Fratton Park.

The 47-year-old Croat, who described his role as having a finger in all pies at the south coast club was, instead, thrust almost immediately into the role of caretaker-manager and immediately picked a winning team, despite key injuries and suspension to defender David Unsworth.

De Zeeuw said: "You must say that tactically he got it right in his first game for us. It was never the intention to push him straight into this but he had a good look at us first and I think the win eased him in a little bit. He's a bit more relaxed now, you can see that."

Genial Dutchman de Zeeuw admits he was "tempted" to take fierce retribution on Bolton's Diouf for the spitting incident but said: "In the end I am glad I handled it like I did. I had a word with him and at the end I also had a word with the ref. I could have gone further but I thought why bother.

"I just want to concentrate on my football now."