'Gutted': Portsmouth boss hit by yet another injury blow for Sheffield United visit - but remains optimistic
John Mousinho admits he’s ‘gutted’ over the loss of leading scorer Callum Lang.
Although he has taken encouragement from the attacker’s absence possibly lasting up to three weeks rather than anything more significant.
Lang was forced off with a groin issue in the 76th minute of last weekend’s agonising 2-1 defeat at Burnley, to be replaced by Sammy Silvera.
Although ruled out of Saturday’s visit of Sheffield United, Pompey’s boss won’t put a definitive timescale on how long the 26-year-old will be missing from duty.
It’s yet another injury for the Blues to contend with, but Mousinho is optimistic over Lang’s situation.
He told The News: ‘We are not entirely sure with Callum, we’re not going to put a definite timescale on it, it’s not going to be months.
‘Hopefully it's just going to be a couple of weeks because he’s just feeling his groin and there’s nothing too bad, but we have to protect him.
‘The output that you see in games and the amount of matches he has played this season has been very, very high, particularly considering he had that nasty ankle injury towards the back end of last year.
‘Just getting Callum back into the rhythm of things was brilliant for us and we’re gutted to miss him, but we don’t think he’s going to be too bad.’
Meanwhile, it has been an encouraging week for Mark O’Mahony (foot) and Conor Shaughnessy (calf) as they push to return from injury.
A comeback against Sheffield United may not be out of the question, although both need to be assessed on Friday before Mousinho sits down to finalise his 20-man squad.
He added: ‘Mark has been back in training for us and we’ll take a look at that on Friday, but we don’t want to rush things.
‘With Mark, he played the game in the Carabao Cup for Brighton, so that was a positive, but then he picked up the knock while away in the international break.
‘It has now been three weeks since he kicked a ball in anger, so we’ll have to see.
‘With Conor, he is going to have a fitness test on Friday morning and we’ll see how he is then.’