‘Not fair on poor lad’: Key Portsmouth man handed licence to terrorise Championship
The Luton Town loanee soared early on at Pompey, but has seen his Championship form dip. John Mousinho reveals the plan to get the £1.5m man firing again.
Millenic Alli has been pinpointed as a critical figure in Pompey’s fight for Championship survival.
And John Mousinho’s handed the Luton Town loanee the licence to play without constraints, as he aims to return to the flying form seen early on in his Fratton stay.
Mousinho on Alli: ‘I want him to have freedom to take his man on’
Pompey will once again look to Alli to bring the inspiration to their foundering attacking play, as they go to QPR in their final outing before the international break.
The former Exeter man levels have dipped from the highs first seen, when joining for the rest of the campaign on loan in January.
But Mousinho feels giving the Irishman freedom to put defences on the back foot can reap dividends for Pompey, across the Championship fight for survival.
Mousinho said: ‘Milli’s going to be massively important.
‘We need all our players at it, but our wingers and Milli in particular. We need Milli to be direct, keep getting at full-backs and enjoy his football.
‘There’s a certain structure we want to the boys to play in but, at the same time, we want to give Milli a lot of freedom.
‘If he’s 1v1 v a defender we want him to take him on, if it’s 2v1 maybe come back out because we’ll have an overload somewhere else.
‘But I do want him to be positive, he’s done that consistently - I want him to stay with that.
‘Without going into too much detail, I just want him to be positive and have the freedom to take his man on.
‘The last thing you want is your players to overthink what they do on the pitch. For Milli, it’s about him being direct and being free.’
With Josh Murphy out for the season and Keshi Anderson injured, Alli has started all of the 13 Pompey games he’s been available for since arriving at PO4.
Mousinho acknowledged that’s put a tough demand on the 26-year-old, who hadn’t played three games in week since last January.
Mousinho added: ‘I think with Milli you have to take into account, when he signed for us in January, he’d not played a huge amount this season.
‘That wasn’t back-to-back games, but he’s now started 13 games on the spin for us which he hadn’t done in the Championship before.
‘He went from Exeter to Luton to us very quickly and we’ve had that heavy reliance on him from day one.
‘From the moment he’s stepped in the building he started against Sheffield Wednesday and every game since, playing 90 minutes in a lot of games.
‘Within those games you will get drop-offs in performance and fluctuations, while we haven’t had the chance to take him out.
‘When we signed Milli we thought we’d have Murph (Josh Murphy) back in February and there was Keshi (Anderson) back in the mix as well. They could’ve shared the workload.
‘We haven’t been able to do that and we’ve had such a heavy reliance on him, it’s not been fair on the poor lad.’