'Tougher league on paper': Portsmouth boss John Mousinho details his ambitions for the 2025-26 Championship season
John Mousinho details to The News his realistic expectations as he looks ahead to Pompey’s forthcoming Championship campaign
‘Whenever I am asked about Pompey’s realistic ambitions for this season, I reply that it’s about staying in the Championship.
First and foremost, that’s what we want to achieve and, as a football club, that would give us another year’s worth of stability, another year’s worth of building, another year’s worth of financial stability to go again and put ourselves into a better position.
Staying in the league could mean finishing 16th - like we did last year - it could mean finishing slightly lower or slightly higher. The biggest thing for me is improving upon where we were last year.
If that means our league position then great. If it doesn’t mean league position and I’m sitting here this time next year reflecting on improvements we’ve made over the season which have put us into a much better position as a football club, then I am happy with that. I can live with that.
Bridging the gap
The best example I can give at the moment is when, after finishing eighth in my first season, we felt that, as a football club, that’s exactly where we were. The eighth-best team and couldn’t compete with any of the top six.
After arriving in January 2023 , we lost to Sheffield Wednesday, Plymouth, Barnsley and Peterborough, sides at the top of the league. We hadn’t bridged that gap.
Even had we not won promotion from League One in 2023-24, what we wanted to do was become a bit more competitive and improve upon where we were the previous season.
Thankfully, that meant a significant improvement in league position, but, if it hadn’t, as long as we were in a better position to challenge again the following year, that was the most important thing for the football club.
That's the comparison I will draw with this season. Regardless of the league position, it’s about making sure this time next year we’re in a stronger position to challenge and build upon what we want to achieve as a football club.
We don’t want to stay in the Championship forever, but we’ve got a bit of time to build to try to bridge the gap between us and some of the bigger clubs. And, in order to do that, we’ve got to stay in the league.
Our squad is in a much better position
It feels we are in a much better position this season in terms of our squad, although we still need a bit of strengthening. Ultimately, we will see when the games kick off, but we were already in a very, very good spot towards the back end of last year in terms of where we were with the squad and what we did in that January window.
We’ve needed to replace a few over the summer, particularly the loans we’ve lost, but the loans market, for example, is one which has now just started moving. Clubs who have finished their tours are suddenly making their players available on loan, so that’s an area we will look to strengthen.
But it does feel like we are in a decent-enough spot. Time will tell if we’re in a better position than last season, but, if you compare the two squads we had, the squad at the start of last season was very, very different to the one which finished it.
Some of the players here this time last season had never before set foot in the Championship - now they’ve had a year’s worth of experience at this level and got better for it.
Even though we may not have added in certain positions, we have players who I think are better than they were this time last year because of what they’ve done and the improvements they have made.
A tougher league on paper
Certainly on paper it seems a tougher league this year, especially when you look at the sides who have come up from League One. A lot of people talk about Birmingham and Wrexham and how much they’ve spent, but Charlton have also made a significant outlay in terms of transfer fees and wages.
In addition, when you consider the three sides coming down from the Premier League in Ipswich, Leicester and Southampton, who clearly have the spending power to go again, it looks a bit of a tougher league than when we came up with Oxford and Derby, with less volume in terms of spending and wages.
But who knows what it’s going to be? There will be some sides which surprise us, some sides which don’t and, ultimately, every single team we play against are difficult opponents, as we found out last year.
I guess what sums it up is last year we took no points off Plymouth and four from Leeds - and in between that it could have been anything depending on what mood we were in. That’s the Championship.
Enjoy the season.’