John Mousinho details Portsmouth first-team plans for 'development project' Luke Brooke-Smith
The 18-year-old started the first half of the Blues’ goalless draw at SV Darmstadt
John Mousinho has pinpointed where ‘development project’ Luke Brooke-Smith fits into his first-team plans.
The New Zealand international, who turned 18 in June, was handed his first outing for the Blues in Saturday’s goalless draw at SV Darmstadt.
Starting on the left wing, the former Wellington Phoenix youngster featured for the first half before being replaced by Eoin Kenny as the 1,433 travelling Pompey fans were handed a first glimpse of their latest signing.
Mousinho was pleased with how Brooke-Smith fared, particularly with the Blues’ wing options presently devastated by injury.
And he has revealed his first-team vision for the teenager with the 2026-27 campaign on the horizon.
‘He’s a player who we think can affect the first-team’
Mousinho told The News: ‘We played Luke on Saturday because we’ve been short of wide players considering where we are with injuries at the moment and we wanted to bring him in.
‘Ultimately, he’s a player who we think can affect the first-team, it’s much more of a development project as well.
‘Luke has started a handful of games in the A-League and only just turned 18. As you can probably imagine, he’s had a busy summer with a lot of speculation around the transfer, not just for us but there were other clubs involved as well.
‘So he’s not been at it in terms of the levels of fitness and levels of training which maybe some of the players have, but I thought he did well against Darmstadt for his first time out in a Pompey shirt against good opposition.
‘We aren’t looking to loan him out. We brought him in to be a development project, but also someone who we think can affect the squad. He's also our only fit left winger at the moment
‘If Luke’s good enough to play, he'll play. Probably the way I would envisage it this season is he’ll have an impact off the bench, but be around the first-team because I think he has the attributes to affect the Championship this year.’
Four wingers sidelined by injury
In terms of Pompey’s wingers, Keshi Anderson and Franco Umeh will both miss the start of the season following injury set-backs over the last month.
Josh Murphy is also expected to be absent from the opening two fixtures against West Ham and QPR as he continues his recovery following groin surgery at the end of April.
While Harvey Blair felt his hip during the warm-up ahead of kick off against Darmstadt and, subsequently, didn’t feature off the bench in the goalless draw. The Blues are waiting to learn the full extent of his latest potential injury.
Brooke-Smith, however, is available - along with fellow summer signing and Northern Ireland Under-21 international Kenny.
Mousinho added: ‘Luke’s pacy and a powerful lad, technically pretty good as well. There’s a lot to improve there, but he’s direct, he gets at full-backs and has good work-rate off the back of it.
‘One of the most important things with Luke over the past week or so is he wants to learn, he wants to improve. Chucking him into Saturday’s game, I don’t think he was out of his depth.
‘There is plenty we want to improve upon, but I thought it was a really tough test for him and he did pretty well.’