'Josh may not replace any of them': Portsmouth boss addresses his centre-half scrap after stunning West Brom display

John Mousinho is convinced Pompey’s centre-halves had a point to prove after using the arrival of Josh Knight to produce a stunning defensive display.

The £1m former Peterborough defender made the switch from Hannover 96 on Thursday, yet wasn’t in the squad at West Brom, despite having received international clearance.

Regardless, his new-found rivals in Regan Poole and Conor Shaughnessy were magnificent in the 1-1 draw at The Hawthorns as the Blues claimed a hard-earned, but thoroughly deserved, point.

As a fellow right-sided centre-half, inevitably Poole may fear for his place the most, yet the ex-Lincoln man conjured up an outstanding man-of-the match showing.

And Mousinho was delighted with the central-defensive partnership’s reaction to the Blues’ latest summer recruit.

Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘All players have a point to prove every time they set foot on the pitch. There should be no player pulling on a Pompey shirt that thinks I've cracked it, I haven’t got a point to prove. There’s always somebody watching, always somebody judging, always somebody willing to take your shirt.

‘I don’t know who Josh may replace, he might not replace anyone. I’m not looking and going “Oh here’s a player and I want him to dislodge any of the others”. I want those two to be brilliant all year and I want those two to be a centre-half partnership.

‘I also want Josh to be brilliant, Ibs (Bowat) to be brilliant, Hayden (Matthews) to be brilliant, to give me a real headache, that’s my challenge to all the players we’ve got in the building. Go and show me you are good enough to play 46 games.

‘We want competition, we want competition for places, and that’s healthy. We need centre-halves, we need every single player on their toes all the time. It’s a long, long season, many, many things change very, very quickly.

‘It’s like with every single player we have in the squad, If players are good enough then they will play in the side, they have got to earn that.

‘Certainly the players who have the shirts at the minute will have to earn staying in the side, which they have certainly done today - and we have to keep that going forward.

‘We had four contracted centre-halves, Tom (McIntyre) was the fifth. We looked at that and were really happy with the four of them, but all had injury issues last season and that was a concern for us.

‘Touch wood, we have managed to keep them all fit so far this year, that was probably the biggest concern and when we had the chance to add and strengthen the group with someone as good as Josh, we decided to take it.’

While Poole and Shaughnessy started for the third successive Championship match this season, Mousinho also had two centre-halves on the bench.

Hayden Matthews was joined by Ibane Bowat, with the latter having not been included in the 20-man squad for the previous week’s 2-1 defeat to Norwich.

And Mousinho has explained why Knight was not included, despite becoming Pompey’s seventh recruit of the season on Thursday.

He added: ‘Josh came over from Germany on Wednesday. He had a long, long drive with his wife, young son, and two dogs and it was a hell of a drive from Germany, so we flagged a few fatigue issues.

‘He trained with us on Friday, but there was absolutely no point in bringing him up to West Brom because I wouldn’t have brought him on and we need him to settle in and rest well for the rest of the season. We have 43 big games left.’

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