Exclusive:John Mousinho Portsmouth Q&A: Injuries, investment, squad fatigue and Toby Steward's future
We asked for your questions to put to Pompey boss John Mousinho - and you weren’t slow in coming forward with your offerings. From injuries to spending, player roles and their Fratton futures - the Blues head coach has tackled the lot.
Q: With Segecic and Chaplin not in the starting XI, does he feel Pompey have shown they are much more capable of competing with the opposition physically? @JSweetman92
A: ‘I think we’ve dealt with physicality pretty well with the pair of those in the side, in the past few weeks.
‘If you take our form post the Arsenal game, we’ve come up against some physical sides and dealt with it pretty well, to be honest. I don’t think it’s been a huge problem.
‘I thought the physicality was there at the top end of the pitch against Charlton, but if you’re swapping Chappers and Segs for Gustavo and Swifty, I wouldn’t say we’re all of a sudden tearing it up and going for these physical monsters.
‘Swifty’s a ball player and Gustavo’s an exciting winger, so I don’t think that had too much of an impact. Segs and Chappers aren’t the biggest, but I actually think they compete really for well for everything they do. They land on a lot of second balls and have a physical presence.’
Q: Is Jacob Brown 100 per cent a striker or just a winger? He never changes Brown with Bishop. Asya Ivo Dinevi
A: ‘He’s versatile. He has versatility and Colby is the starting No9 at the minute.
‘I think Browny gives up that versatility as a nine, 10 and probably a right winger as well.’
Q How do we address these injury issues - something's clearly not right. Matt Hounsell (via email)
A: I don’t think if all of a sudden, say, we train on different pitches and did x, y and z it would change.
‘I still think we need to get into a spot individually and as a team where we can cope with injuries a bit better.
‘But I think we have to be wary of those individual cases, and just try to improve as best we can.
‘That’s whether signing different players, or building players up in different ways so they are robust enough to cope with that.’
Do we have a year option on Steward as his deal is up this summer? If we haven't how have we allowed our prized youth asset to go into last months of deal and risk a tribunal on him? Surely that goes against 'the model' @MousinhosMoose
‘We’ve got an option on Toby. He will be here next year challenging for a spot - that’s the plan for Toby.
‘Now whether we then go for one more year on loan, I don’t know, it will depend on what the level is because I think he’s now stepped up really well. He’s part of a side who is absolutely flying this year in the Scottish second division.
‘We then have to see if we think the jump is from there to the Championship, or maybe to someone in League One.
‘I don’t know about that, but Toby has done well enough this year to come back and really warrant pushing for a place in that goalkeeping department, at least.’
Q: How long is he willing to put up with the lack of investment in the team which has resulted in us not being able to afford to recruit a fit championship centre-half, before he looks for a new club with a board that will provide such basic funding levels for the team?@steve1979158a*
*The response to this question was used in a story at portsmouth.co.uk today
A: ‘Like I’ve said, at the moment the plan is to build on what we’re trying do this season - and be very short term.
‘We need to very focussed on staying in the Championship now - and then completely review things in the summer.
‘We need to look at where we are as a football club and, if we hopefully stay in the league, look at what our strategy is going to be over the next four to five years. Then we need to go from there.
‘We would need to have a really serious conversation about the levels of investment required.
‘I 100 per cent think the owners will be open to that, but over the past couple of years it’s just been about consolidating in the Championship.
‘Then, if we do that, we then buy ourselves a bit of time to push on as a football club.
‘I don’t think there’s any doubt after the League One season, everyone was saying how we recruited in the summer, January and how much investment was there.
‘We went into the Championship season with a budget and, in the first half of the season, we were undercooked in terms of where we were as a side. We addressed that last January in the short term.
‘We probably tripled that in terms of the transfer budget in the summer and increased the playing budget as well.
‘If you look at where we are now and what we did in January, if we went back and knew what Birmingham, Wrexham and Charlton were going to spend coming up and the rest of the league. Maybe in terms of the rest of the Championship, we have a bit of work to do there.’
How big an issue is getting through the next week with this squad going to be? Lee Nightingale, via email
‘It’s a big challenge. There’s two sides to it, one advantage is we have is we’ve played two games less than everyone else. So, in theory, we should have a bit more in the legs, to a certain extent.
‘It’s just something we have to manage, particularly with the way we’re playing - we’re asking a huge amount of the boys.
‘The pitches we’re playing on are heavy - Preston, Fratton and again at The Valley it was a heavy pitch to play on.
‘All we can do is focus on the next game and try to get through it. I think Millwall’s pitch is good, but they are a very physical side. We have to just try to manage it as best we can.’