'We couldn't take that risk': Portsmouth boss' Millwall selection admission as squad shortage exposed
John Mousinho insists the necessity to ‘protect’ Conor Shaughnessy was behind his Millwall absence as Pompey’s central defender shortage was exposed.
The Blues were eliminated from the Carabao Cup 1-0 last night, featuring a centre-half partnership of Jordan Williams and Ryley Towler.
Instead Shaughnessy occupied the bench and wasn’t called upon, along with Marlon Pack and Owen Moxon.
Asked to switch from right-back to the centre of defence, Williams’ mistake decided the match, with George Honeyman dispossessing him in the 13th minute to set up Romain Esse for the winner.
Pompey have yet to add to their centre-halves this summer, while Regan Poole and Tom McIntyre continue to be absent through injury.
And Mousinho had no intention of risking Shaughnessy for Carabao Cup progress.
He told The News: ‘I know we are short at centre-back at the moment. With Tom McIntyre and Regan Poole out, we have those two options - Ryley Towler and Conor Shaughnessy - who played fantastically well at the weekend up at Leeds.
‘We couldn't take that risk of losing both, it’s one of those decisions we didn’t necessarily want to make, but we had to make it.
‘It’s just protecting Conor, who had an awful lot of football last year and played pretty much every minute of every game that he’s started. So we thought we’d take him out and give him a rest.
‘It wasn’t ideal, we’ve been in positions in cup games when we’ve been able to rotate the 11, we did that this time last year for Forest Green.
‘We just have to be careful with injuries going into league games. We’ve got Luton on Saturday and can’t afford to lose players
’We are already 4-5 down in terms of where we are with injuries at the minute, so we just have to be very careful of that.’
Pompey had previously utilised Williams in the centre of defence for their 2-0 friendly defeat at Charlton earlier this month.
After being substituted in the 64th minute against Millwall, Zak Swanson moved to centre-half, with Terry Devlin going into the right-back position.
Mousinho added: ‘I thought Jordan did really well, but he will be disappointed being dispossessed for the first goal. He was really solid.
‘Jordan was one of the excellent performers at Leeds and we asked him to go again. That’s why we brought him off after 64 minutes, to try to protect him as well.
‘It’s not a role we are particularly looking at for Jordan, we just asked him to do that as best as he could. Then Zak did a really good job there as well.’