Portsmouth boss backs 'brilliant' Matt Ritchie after ex-Newcastle man's apology to team-mates

Now John Mousinho is focused on bringing the best out of the veteran midfielder after ‘definite glimpses’ of quality so far during his second Fratton Park spell.

The 35-year-old’s misjudged backheel contributed to the Clarets’ 94th-minute winner last weekend, leaving the Blues’ head coach furious with his players.

It capped a difficult start to a Pompey return which had been greeted with much fanfare, but has yet to sparkle for Ritchie.

Without a pre-season under his belt, the former Newcastle man has started just once this term, while featuring five times off the bench, as Mousinho eases him in.

And Pompey’s boss is striving to utilise that Premier League quality from a ‘brilliant’ professional he admires.

He told The News: ‘Matt came in and held his hands up on Monday morning, which is a really good sign the character is there.

‘He has been back out training brilliantly, as he always has, he’s a massive influence around the place, a really important player for us, and someone we value highly.

‘Players always make mistakes, Matt knows he did that in that moment. There were plenty of other things we could have done better as well, by the way, and that’s really important for us.

‘It’s very rare a goal is just the consequence of one mistake, we need to be better at bailing our team-mates out across the board - and that goal was a perfect example of that.

‘Matt has influence around the training ground and what he does on a day-to-day basis is amazing, he brings a load of energy to training, he’s a real leader and also brings a lot of quality to training.

‘The next step up for us and Matt is to really see that (quality) in games. We’ve seen definite glimpses of that, but he hasn't played a huge amount of football over the past couple of seasons, so we need to get him back into the rhythm of doing that and back into the pace of games.

‘Sometimes coming on at Burnley for 21 minutes is a really, really difficult ask. We expect our players to be able to do that and the more game time all these players get, the better.’

Ritchie arrived just four days before the campaign's start, having spent the summer searching for a club following his Newcastle exit.

And Mousinho believes that absence of a pre-season has impacted upon the Gosport lad.

He added: ‘With the players who haven't had a pre-season, they’ve not managed to adjust and hit the ground running straight away. That has obviously been a factor with a lot of players we’ve had.

‘There’s no issue there, we just have to make sure that, post that first international break, we get all those players up to speed and I think we are. For the most part, we now have players who have played a decent amount of minutes and had a good chunk of training.’