Portsmouth boss reeling from yet another injury blow - but allays Zak Swanson fears
The Gosport lad has started the Blues’ last four Championship games
John Mousinho is waiting to learn the full extent of John Swift’s hamstring injury.
Although he is confident Zak Swanson, who also suffered a hamstring scare last night against Wrexham, is ‘fine, absolutely fine’.
The Blues lost 2-1 against the play-off chasing side on Tuesday evening, ending a run of two successive victories on their travels over an eight-day period.
Mousinho was forced to substitute Swift in the 41st minute after the midfielder felt the problem in his right leg, with Adrian Segecic replacing him.
In addition, Swanson, who pulled a goal back for Pompey early in the second half, came off with 11 minutes remaining, with centre-half Ibane Bowat introduced.
Although the head coach is adamant the resasons behind the substitutions of Gustavo Caballero, Regan Poole and Ebou Adams were not injury-related.
Mousinho told The News: ‘John’s felt his hamstring. I don’t think it’s too bad, we’ll see how it settles down tomorrow.
‘He did feel it, but we didn’t want it to go fully.
‘John obviously had the injury issue, Gustavo was a tactical switch, Ebou has just commenced Ramadan, so that was a big ask for him to play the amount of time and the amount of games that he has done.
‘I think he was completely dead on his feet with everything he’s doing at the minute, we were well aware of that.
‘Zak was feeling his hamstring. He’s fine, he’s absolutely fine, but, with that shape change as well, I thought it made sense.
‘While Regan was on a yellow and we wanted to get a bit more height for maybe that set-piece.’
Caballero, who marked his third consecutive Pompey start at Wrexham, was replaced at half-time by Harvey Blair.
Mousinho was unhappy with the Paraguayan winger’s first-half contribution, with the visitors trailing 2-0 at the time and looking leggy after a gruelling away schedule.
For Blair, it marked his first Blues outing since being forced off in the first half of last month’s FA Cup clash with Arsenal due to a hip flexor injury.
And, having returned to the squad for last weekend’s 3-1 win at Millwall and been an unused substitute, he was back in action at the Racecourse Ground after his half-time introduction.
Mousinho added: ‘Gustavo was tactical. I thought Harvey showed some really bright sparks.
‘He could have gone a bit more, as the game went on. Wrexham dropped into that back five and made it difficult for us to get a huge amount of joy in the wide areas, but I still think we can keep improving.
‘It’s Harvey’s first game since early January against Arsenal, so there’s loads more to come from him.’