Pompey boss John Mousinho speaks to The News and discusses all the talking points ahead of Blackpool's visit to Fratton Park on Saturday.
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00:00 So John, back to football again this weekend after the break. How's the injuries among
00:06 the squad at the moment for Pompey?
00:07 Yeah we've obviously got quite a few at the moment and some have used that international
00:11 break to come back and recover, others are longer term and there's some that unfortunately
00:16 we've suffered over the international break. So in terms of the ones that have come back
00:20 and are recovering nicely, Marlon who was available for selection for the Charlton game
00:24 but we thought it was maybe one or two days too soon for him and we didn't want to force
00:27 him into any action that would cause him to have any setback, not just on the ankle
00:31 injury but probably more importantly everything else if we threw him back into competition.
00:35 So we decided to give him an extra game and the extra two weeks worth of training which
00:38 has been really beneficial but Marlon's back ready for action at the weekend. Tom Lowry
00:44 has been training as well, about 75% of training sessions he's got to so still a couple of
00:48 weeks away from being available. I think we're going to look at the EFL Trophy game to probably
00:53 reintegrate him back into the side if we can get him some minutes there. That seems about
00:57 the right time scale for us on that. Unfortunately on the flip side of that you would have seen
01:01 that Paddy Lane pulled out of the Northern Ireland squad on Monday, he had a scan on
01:04 his calf having felt it towards the back end of the game on Saturday and unfortunately
01:09 that revealed he's got a minor calf tear so he won't, well highly unlikely that he'll
01:14 feature at the weekend. It shouldn't be too long that he's out but just one of those
01:20 that we want to have a slight bit of precaution on. So yeah a bit of a shame with Paddy's
01:24 one. In terms of the longer term injuries, all progressing pretty nicely. Tino's back
01:29 with Chelsea under their stewardship at the moment, he's going to be sort of eight weeks
01:32 plus I think as a bare minimum. And then Regan Poole is due for surgery at the back end
01:38 of the month next week, just giving him an extra couple of weeks to make sure he can
01:41 build up the strength in his knee before he goes under ACL reconstruction which really
01:45 helps at the back end of everything in terms of the strength that he'll go into the operation
01:48 with. Josh Dock all progressing really nicely and on the positive side Anthony Scully's
01:53 been out on the grass doing really well and looking like he will return hopefully before
02:00 the turn of the year, if not we'll see him in January. With Paddy Lane then, what's the
02:04 time frame you're looking at with him being out? I think we're looking at a couple of
02:07 weeks on that so nothing major but one of those where towards the back end of the game
02:12 he thought he'd cramped up in his calf and we ended up bringing him off but we didn't
02:17 see there being any issue so he flew away with Northern Ireland and felt alright but
02:21 unfortunately the scan revealed a minor tear so we've got to be careful with him. He got
02:24 hit a few times in that second half against Charlton as well didn't he? Yeah and he was
02:27 excellent so it's a bit of a blow really to not have him available and one of those things
02:33 that we just have to get on with and thankfully nothing too major because I thought he was
02:40 really influential in the Charlton game. What's the options now with him missing from the
02:45 right wing? I think we've got plenty to be honest, that's probably Abu's natural position
02:49 obviously we've got Gavin White, Josh Martin coming into the fold now. That wasn't the
02:54 reason we brought Josh Martin in, we brought Josh in off the back of the Tino Anjou in
02:58 injury but we've got cover there as well so there's plenty of options in terms of what
03:03 we can do on the right and that's the whole point of having the squad and making sure
03:07 that we have players that can rotate into that spot. And Connor Ogilvie is there? Connor
03:11 Ogilvie is doing okay, he had a slight issue in terms of a reaction from a couple of injections
03:20 that he had, not an issue but just didn't quite react particularly well so monitoring
03:24 Connor and it's just taking slightly longer than we expected. The visit at Backport obviously
03:29 brings a familiar face in Owen Day back, you had him for half a season, what did you make
03:34 of him when he was here? I thought Owen was excellent when he was here, I think he was
03:38 slightly unlucky in terms of his total output, that was always the thing I think he spoke
03:42 about when he left as well, the one thing that disappointed him about his time here
03:46 in terms of goals and assists because he put in a huge amount of work every week, work
03:50 rate was right up there, created some really good quality moments and I think I said when
03:55 he left at the back end of last year, my thought was that especially if Blackpool went down
03:59 they're going to keep him, he's going to feature at this level and he has done. He was part
04:05 of the side that beat Shrewsby 4-0 last week, playing in a different position, playing at
04:09 left wing back and we expect to see him feature this weekend and we know that he's a real
04:13 threat. Was there ever a consideration to bring him back? At that point, the point Blackpool
04:18 got relegated we knew that he would be part of their plan so it wasn't something we explored.
04:22 You mentioned about his work rate, he gave everything and the fans took to him, it was
04:25 just the end product wasn't it? That was all it was and it's not for lack of quality with
04:30 Owen, we know he's a good player because we see him day in day out in training, his finishing,
04:34 his crossing is good. When he got going he was brilliant and sometimes he's probably
04:38 a victim of the fact that we didn't get enough bodies in the box in certain games towards
04:41 the back end of last year in particular where our real focus this year is to try and get
04:45 more people on the end of crosses when we do deliver the ball into the box. I thought
04:50 from day one Owen was excellent, works incredibly hard, really good young pro and he's got a
04:55 great future in the game. Do you think if he was in the current team then, bearing in
04:58 mind he's trying to get more bodies in the box, it will benefit him more this season
05:01 than last season? I think so and a lot of players have improved I think from last year
05:05 as well so I'm sure Owen would have been one of those. The fact that he's now back at Blackpool
05:10 with a side that want to compete at the top end of this league and he's playing games
05:13 tells me that he has improved as well and it's no surprise to me, I was convinced at
05:18 the back end of last year that this would happen and it's no surprise to me that he's
05:21 now featuring in the league one side that's doing well. Thank you very much.