Portsmouth details extent of injuries as quartet miss Birmingham City finale
Details over Madiodio Dia’s Birmingham City absence and injury updates over Colby Bishop, Josh Murphy and Harvey Blair.
Pompey has revealed the factors behind his quartet of end-of-season absences.
The Blues boss explained Colby Bishop, Josh Murphy and Harvey Blair were all absent from the final-day clash with Birmingham City due to injury issues.
Bishop and Blair precautionary Birmingham City absences
Meanwhile, Madiodio Dia didn’t feature as the curtain came down on the Championship campaign, with the defender granted a leave of absence following a family bereavement.
Bishop not being present was a precautionary decision from the Pompey boss, as he deals with a hamstring injury.
Mousinho feels the striker would have played given the chance, so took the decision to rule the 29-year-old out to avoid the danger of Bishop suffering a hamstring tear.
Blair suffered a slight issue in training, with the Pompey boss making the call to exercise caution over the former Liverpool winger.
Mousinho said: ‘Colby has been suffering through a few aches and pains over the end of the season.
‘His hamstring is really tight so we didn’t want to risk that one at all.
‘Probably if it was a league game we needed something from, in fact any game, Colby would’ve said he was available so I made that decision to pull him out.
‘He was keen to play, but there was no point him going off with a hamstring tear in the summer.’
‘Madiodio had a family bereavement unfortunately, so he’s not in the country currently, so thoughts and best wishes to his family
‘Harvey picked up an injury in training on Tuesday. It wasn’t too bad but was another one we needed to protect and not make worse - particularly with Harvey’s injury record.
Mousinho explained yesterday Murphy had minor groin surgery this week, as he dealt with a series of issues over the campaign.
The winger had been playing with hamstring, hernia and metatarsal issues, with the latter also requiring surgery. Murphy then returned against Coventry and impressively at Stoke, before sitting out the Birmingham game.
Murphy, who was playing with two local anaesthetic injections per game at the end of last season , is still seeing his metatarsal heal as he goes into the summer.
Mousinho said yesterday: ‘Josh’s absence was pre-planned. He had minor surgery on Thursday, so you would have seen him today walking round, he’s got his post-surgical, sort of garments on.
‘It is minor, it was always planned. It was just whether we got it done before the end of the season.
‘What we had to do with Murph was get him through to be available if we needed him to play. And as soon as we then were safe, we obviously had the luxury (to book him in for an operation).
’We couldn’t book the surgery in between Coventry and Stoke, Murph wanted to play against Stoke, he wanted to do that, and as soon as that was done he’s had his surgery.
‘He’ll be back very, very quickly from that.’