Exclusive:'We've got some right, we've got plenty wrong': Portsmouth boss hails his strongest squad as Blues boss
The Blues have lost one of their last seven matches, despite missing at least 10 players through injury
John Mousinho is convinced Pompey’s squad is now at its strongest since their Championship return.
And he believes the accomplishment of a 1-1 draw at Wolves, despite having rotated his team, offers an excellent reflection of the Blues’ evolution - and transfer success.
Faced with a fourth match in 10 days amid a gruelling post-international break schedule, Mousinho opted to rest four key performers for the trip to Molineux, including skipper Marlon Park.
Previously, similar rotation during hectic periods prompted five-goal hammerings at West Brom (January 2025) and Bristol City (January 2026), cruelly exposing squad shortcomings.
On this occasion, however, Terry Devlin’s 86th-minute strike earned a 1-1 draw against a Wolves side with aspirations of an instant return to the Premier League.
And for Mousinho, it demonstrated the strength in depth the Blues now boast.
‘We’ve got some right, we’ve got plenty wrong, that’s how it is with recruitment’
He told The News: ‘It’s completely different to previous occasions, we have made a number of signings since then.
‘Over the years we’ve had the ability to decide which players when you come up from League One you are going to keep, which players you are going to extend their contract, which players you move on and let go - and, in the meantime, try to add the quality on top of that.
‘Through the years we’ve got some right, we’ve got plenty wrong, that’s the way it is with recruitment a lot of the time.
‘What we’re trying to do, particularly this summer, is make that effort to move into making signings which aren’t maybe gambles at those lower levels of finance.
‘We are still going to take those, trying to turn players around that maybe no-one has taken a chance with, but we are building well.
‘We don’t want to get too carried away with ourselves because we’ve had a decent week, there’s still plenty of work to do and it was a decent-enough reflection on Tuesday night when we made those four changes. Compare that to some of the other away games in the past when we’ve done that.
‘One thing we tried to do last year, as well as trying to stay in the league, there was a big push to be a bit more competitive because we hadn’t been competitive in enough games in the season before, we had been blown away.
‘We did that to some extent last year, but this year we are being competitive and really trying to push from where we’ve been over the past couple of years.’
Four players rested at Molineux
Following the 1-0 success at Norwich, Pack, Zak Swanson, Ryan Kavuma-McQueen and Marko Milovanovic dropped to the bench on Tuesday, to be replaced by Devlin, Ebou Adams, Rocco Shein and Tyrese Shade.
Certainly it could be argued that Devlin and Adams should be regular starting XI selections, while Shein and Shade totalled almost £4m in transfer fees as Pompey upped their spending in the summer.
And the fact Mousinho has overseen a point at Wolves, despite also being without 10 first-team players through injury at present, shows how far the Blues have progressed.
He added: ‘If you just look on paper and go right, Terry’s coming in for Swanny, you have two really competitive full-backs there. Ebou’s coming in for Marlon, a 30-year-old, with a wealth of Championship experience who has now been a really solid performer for us for 10 months.
‘We brought Tyrese in to make that change up top, who we’ve had plenty of success with this season. Rocco also came in, who was one of our big signings in the summer. We are bringing in players that we think can properly compete at the level.
‘We want progress, we want to constantly move forward and there’s two sides to that. We don’t want to get too carried away with ourselves, we know it’s still a brutal league and we have to make sure that staying in the league is a priority, without being too negative - but we do want to kick on from that.
‘Over the past few windows we’ve had to do double figures in signings and need to get ourselves into a position where we go from fire fighting to hopefully being a bit more sustainable in the building.
‘I don’t know what January looks like, but I think it will be a successful January for us if we are looking at maybe 3-4 incoming, rather than the 9-11 that we’ve done in the past. That should be a good signal in terms of where we are.’