'Frustrated' Rich Hughes addresses Portsmouth injury crisis - and reveals what they are doing about it
The Blues presently having 11 played absent through injury, including recent signing Keshi Anderson
Rich Hughes reflected on Pompey’s devastating injury woes and reassured the Fratton faithful: We’re doing as many things as we can.
But he is adamant there are no issues with their Copnor Road training facilities, whose pitches were relaid only last summer.
The Blues presently have 11 players missing through injury, with Keshi Anderson the latest casualty having been ruled out for 6-8 weeks with a hamstring problem sustained in training last week.
Also unavailable are Conor Shaughnessy (hip flexor), Colby Bishop (ankle), Harvey Blair (hip flexor), Mark Kosznovszky (ACL), Hayden Matthews (ankle), Franco Umeh (hamstring), Josh Murphy (foot), Florian Bianchini (knee tendonitis), Thomas Waddingham (groin) and Josh Knight (back).
Like supporters, Hughes is hugely frustrated with ongoing injury problems which saw two of their summer signings - Kosznovszky and Umeh - last month ruled out for the season.
Yet the sporting director insists the club are exploring every avenue in a bid to alleviate the long-running issues.
‘We’re doing as many things as we can behind the scenes’
He told The News: ‘It’s a really tough spell, I know John has alluded to that in the press. People tend to perceive or view it as injuries as a whole, but there are different types of it.
‘There are the muscle injuries, which we have to look at workload and what we are exposing from the players, then making decisions based on that.
‘Then there are contact and impact injuries, which are the ones we can’t protect and control. Like Colby coming off against West Brom after what was probably his best performance for a good period of time. He had been leading the line through January and then rolled his ankle through a non-descript moment.
‘It’s important not to group injuries as a whole, to figure out the mechanism of the injury and were there any precursors to it or is it something like Colby landing on his ankle funnily and rolling it. You can do all the work in the world, but you can’t ever stop that happening.
‘We’re doing as many things as we can behind the scenes, working with different people. For instance, we are trying to get on top of our travels as best we can. The schedule is brutal as we go into a run of games in February, five matches in a 14-day period, so there’s high physical demands.
‘Certainly the way John wants the team to be, it does expose the boys physically. That’s how we feel we must play, we have shown that by being physical and aggressive in games, yet that probably comes with a slightly increased risk of injury.
‘However, that’s something we have to mitigate given it’s how we think it’s the best way for us to pick up points in the Championship.
‘We assess everything we do, we’re always having conversations around who needs modified training, who needs protection throughout the week to limit exposure. We work with various different people, working very hard with the boys in terms of nutrition, working hard with the boys in terms of recovery.
‘We are trying as many different things as we can to alleviate the pressure. We’re working with soft tissue specialists to help them, we are doing pilates with the boys. We are trying to take as many different strands for the boys as possible to keep them fit, keep them fighting, keep them healthy.’
New training pitches laid in summer of 2025
Pompey relaid pitches at their Copnor Road training ground in the summer of 2025 - and more work is planned at the end of the current season.
As a consequence of last summer’s work, pre-season training was moved to The Lensbury in Teddington in June 2025 for four days, thereby allowing their new playing surface more time to bed in.
Situated on the banks of the River Thames, the Middlesex-based venue was also used by Southampton that summer, albeit straight after Pompey had checked out.
And Hughes has dismissed suggestions the Blues’ training pitches are to blame for their injury woes.
‘We share the frustration of fans’
He added: ‘The training ground is absolutely fine. If you look at the location of injury, not many of them have been training ground ones.
‘We are always consistently doing work on the training pitches. We went to The Lensbury for the start of pre-season to allow our pitches an extra few days because of the volume of work we’ve done.
‘So we’re constantly working on it, all the groundstaff have worked incredibly hard to make them the best they can be. We will do work on them again this summer to keep them ticking over because that’s, ultimately, where we spend most of our time.
‘It’s important for people to know that we, as a coaching staff, will always share the frustration of fans about injuries, we understand it, we don’t enjoy it, we want as many players to select from as possible.
‘We probably feel very similar things, we are all football fans at heart, we’ve all got the best interests of the football club at heart, and we want the best players out there to give ourselves the best chances of picking up points and being successful.
‘Ultimately, when you are in the eye of the storm, it always feels a little worse. You can go around a lot of Championship football clubs and they are probably having similar struggles with players being ruled out.
‘Speak to different people and they are all sharing the frustration, it’s not only Pompey.’
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