Portsmouth suffer injury blow as defender to miss Stoke City and Oxford United tests

Pompey have been dealt a blow after John Mousinho ruled Conor Shaughnessy out of their matches against Stoke City and Oxford United.

The 28-year-old has been sidelined since the middle of August, and was due to return at the weekend but had to withdraw at the 11th hour. He was named in the starting XI to face Sheffield United after spending more than a month out with a calf issue, but Tom McIntyre came in for him after suffering a recurrence of the problem in the warm-up.

Tom McIntyre came in to partner Regan Poole with Ryley Towler drafted in to the match day squad. It’s likely that the trio will have to see things through until the international break which comes after their game against Oxford United at the weekend.

‘There’s still no news on Conor,” said Mousinho in his pre-match press conference ahead of Wednesday’s trip to the Bet365 Stadium to face Stoke City.

‘He’s going for another scan but it’s a recurrence of the same injury. He won’t play this week.

‘As you'd imagine, anyone who has come back from that injury would be. He wants to play games, he was down on Saturday.’

Shaughnessy is one of several players unavailable for selection right now. Summer signing Ibane Bowat tore his patellar tendon on the training ground, and will miss the entirety of the campaign. Connor Ogilvie was absent at the weekend through illness, whilst Callum Lang (groin), Kusini Yengi (groin), Colby Bishop (heart) have also been sidelined.

The Pompey boss gave an insight as to the week leading up to Shaughnessy’s inclusion in the squad at the weekend, and defended their decision. The centre-back was afforded an adequate amount of time to recover, and there isn’t a belief among the coaching staff that he was rushed back too quickly.

‘We've given him loads of time on it,” stated Mousinho.

‘We never brought him back too soon if he wasn't 100% fit. It's one of those things, we can keep players back for eternity and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

‘‘I have no idea yet what the issue was. We're only ever going to push a player to start if we know that they are ready. Very rarely do we do that just off the back of no training or one training session. He had the full recovery we thought he needed to have.

‘That process I've described is in the physio room, out on the grass, and he's been out training with us, that would have been it.

‘We can say he came back too soon but the alternative for Conor would have been he would have been ready to train on Wednesday, and he was training on Wednesday anyway. He would have trained on Friday, and if we decided to leave him out of the squad, his session on Saturday would have been far heavier than what it was in the warm-up.

‘I think it was just one of those things. It's doubly frustrating because with Conor we felt he was ready to start and would have made a difference.’