Steve Cotterill's men could only muster two meaningful attempts at goal during the entire match. Both efforts came from Nugent, the first of which was a curling effort in the first minute that went just wide and thehe second came in stoppage time when Luke Steele rushed off his line to deny the striker at the death.
Other than that, Pompey were completely clueless going forward, couldn't pass wind and could not find any tempo to their play because Barnsley were quick to close them down.
Yet again, Pompey had conceded because a full back was out of position and just like last week, nobody bothered to close down a player in ex-Southampton man Adam Hamill who was obviously capable of striking a ball from distance.
It wasn't just the defenders who were to blame for another poor result on the road as nobody in a black shirt, with the exception of one or two, performed anywhere near to the standard that is expected of them yesterday.
We lost to a poor side who simply worked much, much harder than we did and even when the referee was being generous to Pompey, the players couldn't take advantage. Had we got anything from this game it would have been robbery.
So why did we perform so badly? Perhaps the lack of effort from some of our players is a result of fatigue and playing so many games in a row. Maybe there is some complacency on their part, knowing that they're going to play every game as there is nobody to replace them.
I don't know what the answer is but it's up to Steve Cotterill to discover why none of our passes are finding team mates, why Dave Kitson looks completely shot of confidence, why we struggle to score away from home and why our defence continue to make the same mistakes time and time again.
In summary, this was arguably our worst defeat of the season. Only the Preston game can rival this one in terms of how terrible Pompey performed in relation to how poor the opposition were on the day.
On a final note, yesterday's misery was personally compounded by the Vision Travel coach breaking down yet again! That's the third time in four away trips that this has happened now and it's simply not good enough.
Like Steve Cotterill, they need to find the source of the problem and rectify it before the customers begin to walk away.
Pompey Player Ratings
Jamie Ashdown: 5 - Spilt a couple of shots, very nervous.
Greg Halford: 4 - Caught out of position far too often.
Aaron Mokoena: 5 - Gave the ball away often.
Ricardo Rocha: 5 - One of his poorest games for Pompey.
Joel Ward: 5 - Looked uncomfortable.
Liam Lawrence: 4 - Hardly in the game.
Hayden Mullins: 5 - Outbattled.
Michael Brown: 5 - Whinged a lot, didn't do much else.
John Utaka: 6 - Looked Pompey's biggest threat and worked hard.
David Nugent: 6 - Had Pompey's only meaningful attempts on goal.
Dave Kitson: 4 - Looks awfully short of confidence.
Substitutes
Darryl Flahavan
Hermann Hreidarsson
Ibrahima Sonko
Richard Hughes (Brown 84): N/A - No time.
Nadir Ciftci (Utaka 84): N/A - Couldn't change things.
Kanu (Kitson 67): 5 - Barely touched the ball.