The message all Portsmouth faithful will want to hear over star man ahead of key clashes with Millwall, Sheffield United and Bristol City
The former Cardiff City and Norwich City man is crucial to Pompey’s Championship hopes. Here’s a John Mousinho message on Josh Murphy all the Fratton Faithful will want to hear today.
Josh Murphy is ready to return to Championship action ‘fully at it’ after the international break.
John Mousinho has backed his star man to be firing on all cylinders at the start of a massive period for Pompey, as they return to league duties against Millwall.
Mousinho on Murphy: ‘Fully at it and 100 per cent’
The Blues boss acknowledged the pause to fixtures arrived at the right time for the key source of attacking threat to his side.
Murphy completed both fixtures against Wrexham and Hull City, coming off the back of a return to action after an ankle issue which kept him sidelined for six weeks.
The time without a game has allowed the 30-year-old to build his fitness with a solid block of training, which has Mousinho confident Murphy returns to duty tomorrow ready to operate at his best.
When asked if the international break has helped The News/Sports Mail Player of the Season, Mousinho said: ‘I think he needed it.
‘We played him for the 90 minutes in those two games against Wrexham and Hull.
‘He had the 40 minutes against Hull to ease him back in as well. So off the two weeks of training across the international break he’s fully at it and 100 per cent.
‘We’ve massively had to manage him. T
‘There was that temptation to start him against Stoke. We gave him 30-35 minutes against Stoke and another 40 minutes against Birmingham, to build him up to be ready to play 90 minutes against Wrexham and Hull.
‘In both of those games we would’ve liked to have taken him off a bit earlier, but both games were in the balance late on. It was 0-0 against Wrexham and 2-2 late against Hull and we wanted to keep him on to get the winner.’
Pompey have other attacking options to ease Murphy reliance
Murphy’s ongoing importance to Pompey remains clear, after the 2024-25 campaign when his 21 goal contributions were crucial to his side’s Championship success.
The Blues didn’t win a game when the Oxford United arrival didn’t feature last term, but have managed successes against the U’s and Middlesbrough without him this time around. Mousinho sees attacking options to supplement the winger’s danger moving forward.
He added: ‘We don’t want to be too reliant on Murph. Through the period where we didn’t have Murph we picked up results and a really good couple of wins without him in the side.
‘I don’t think we managed to do that last season, I don’t think we won a single game when we didn’t have Murph.
‘So we’ve managed to change that and picked up two wins, so it’s about adding what we’ve got with Josh Murphy to Callum Lang, Adrian Segecic and Nico Schmid coming back.
‘It’s picking up results with Harvey (Blair), Franco (Umeh) etc to return and really bolstering our options at the top end of the pitch.’