‘Flog him to death’: The key to unlocking Luton Town loanee’s form critical to Portsmouth survival hopes
The Republic of Ireland man is key to Championship survival hopes, with John Mousinho seeing a pathway to unlocking his best Pompey displays.
John Mousinho believes Keshi Anderson’s Pompey return can rejuvenate Millenic Alli’s form.
The Blues boss feels the fit-again winger can lighten the load on the Luton Town loanee, after having to ‘flog him to death’ at Fratton Park.
Fit-again Anderson holds key to Alli’s best form
Alli’s form has been a big subject of conversation after the Republic of Ireland man arrived at PO4 in January.
The 26-year-old hit the ground running with some flying performances, before his levels dipped amid a run of six games without a win.
Alli has started every game since joining the club and generally played most of the available minutes, with his half-time withdrawal against Swansea City last month the exception.
Anderson is back now after two months out with a hamstring injury, with Mousinho seeing that return as a significant factor for Alli.
He said: ‘I think so (Anderson can make Alli a better player), I definitely think that.
‘Also if Milli isn’t having the best of days we can say “no problem, we can make the change on 60 minutes”.
‘It was my fault, but we looked at the Hull game and Milli had been absolutely brilliant in all the games going into it.
‘We’d asked him to play so many minutes, it was one game too far for him.
‘But I didn’t feel we could make the change there and Milli suffered for that. So having that option is nice.
‘There’s that load that’s been on him, we’ve been asking him to play every minute of every single game.
Mousinho on Alli: ‘We’ve had to flog him to death’
‘We’ve managed to bring him off in a couple, but the situation we brought him into was we didn’t have any wingers - not any fit wingers.
‘So we’ve brought Milli in and we’ve had to flog him to death a couple of times, unfortunately.`
Mousinho could see the parallels between the load on Alli and a similar strain being placed on Josh Murphy, in much of his time at Fratton Park.
The head coach highlighted how unrelenting injury issues out wide have often forced his hand on that front, with his preference to keep wingers fresh given the demands he places on them.
Mousinho added: ‘We did the same thing to Murph at times last season, when we asked him to play 90 minutes pretty much every time he stepped foot on a football pitch.
‘We suffered a little bit from that, and we brought him back this time because we just didn’t have any other option against Wrexham and Hull.
‘Where we’ve been with those wide options over recent seasons is we haven’t felt like we’re in a position to rotate. We haven’t been in a position to rotate, that’s something we’ve struggled with.
‘If you look at where we were at one point in January post-Arsenal, we’d lost Franco (Umeh) and Harvey (Blair).
‘So we went into that Sheffield Wednesday game without any wingers, but signed Milli during the week so picked up one.
‘But I think we finished that game with Terry (Devlin) on the right and Segs (Segecic) came over to the left.
‘We were just trying to patch things up, unfortunately it’s been like that in too many positions this season. There’s been far too much patching things together and trying to make things work, over those options.’