Pompey boss John Mousinho talks to The News ahead of the Blues' Championship game against Millwall
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00:00John, obviously the big question I had in this game is the players you rested on Saturday, are they all OK to go against another one?
00:09Yeah, they should be absolutely fine.
00:12We obviously have got to make a few decisions on team selection,
00:15but that was the point of Saturday to make sure that we, first of all,
00:21protected all the players from anything that we needed to protect them from in terms of injuries.
00:24And, yeah, just to rotate the side,
00:27I thought they'd have been tired if they'd played at the weekend.
00:29So, about giving them a few extra days, it should really help.
00:32Obviously, you rested on the starting line, have you still used four of them on Friday?
00:36Yeah, I thought that the important thing when you do that is that if you look at where we were on Wednesday,
00:42so off the back of Wednesday night, we didn't do anything Thursday,
00:45very, very little on Friday in terms of physical preparation.
00:49If the players had then gone, nothing on Saturday, nothing on Sunday,
00:51we didn't do a huge amount today.
00:52I didn't want to have that sort of five-day break without any football.
00:55So I think it was really important to get that spike,
00:58get that physical spike in there.
00:59It was very similar, I think, in the Bristol City game as well,
01:02when even at 3-0, the game was probably gone.
01:05We still wanted to get players on the pitch to make sure that they don't come into the game
01:09if selected on Tuesday and they're completely rusted.
01:12You rotated a couple of times, not that much, but a couple of times.
01:16Do you see that happening again for the rest of the season?
01:18Are there pictures ingested like that from anywhere?
01:21Probably not to the extent that we did it at the weekend.
01:23I think there's certainly plenty of scope for making minor changes here and there,
01:27but I thought that was probably a wholesale change, I think, that we made at the weekend.
01:31Especially off the back of two wins,
01:33you probably wouldn't expect that many changes off the back of two really good wins.
01:36So I don't necessarily foresee that between now and the rest of the season.
01:40When I look at the schedule, we've got that busy period around Easter,
01:43but nothing that we faced so far in January.
01:46It's been unique in terms of what I've seen as a player and a coach.
01:49I think it's almost different when you say that you have the data to gauge a player's fitness
01:55and susceptibility to injury and things like that.
01:58Yeah, we've got all the data and the data is really useful, don't get me wrong.
02:01We use it, I'm not going to say we completely ignore it.
02:03We've also got the eye and I did look at players off the back of that game on Wednesday night
02:07against Stoke and thought, we've got such high output.
02:09And regardless of what the GPS units were telling me,
02:12I knew that the output had been really high.
02:14A couple of the players just looked absolutely knackered,
02:17they were dead on their feet, we'd asked everything of them.
02:19And we didn't necessarily make a raft of changes in terms of subs towards the back end of the Stoke game
02:24because I thought we need to win the game.
02:26We need to make sure we get the points at home.
02:27We need to secure that.
02:28And I didn't think it was worth doing.
02:30I thought it was well worth making sure that we won the game.
02:32So, it was a combination really.
02:34And then we speak to players on the Wednesday, we speak to players again on Thursday,
02:38speak to players again on the Friday to see how they are.
02:40We just take everything into account when we're making those decisions.
02:43And presumably following that data prevents injuries?
02:47Yeah, for the most part.
02:48I mean, it is a guide, I think, but it doesn't necessarily stop you from picking up injuries.
02:55We've seen that this season where we've looked at training load,
02:59we've looked at game load and it still hasn't made a difference
03:01because we still picked up injuries doing very little.
03:04Shox was a really, really good example where when he came back into the squad,
03:08it wasn't like he'd had this massive sort of training week
03:11and then came into the matchday squad and injured himself in the warm-up because of that.
03:16So, some of them are just, you know, unpreventable.
03:18But when there are some red flags in terms of what the data is telling you,
03:21it's worth, first of all, listening to it.
03:24It's then worth speaking to the player.
03:26It's then worth taking what you see on the eye and then going from there.
03:29There's been plenty of times throughout football and sort of throughout my time as a head coach
03:34where players have had a massive output, but you just take a different view on it
03:37because you think they're going to be all right at the weekend.
03:39I thought it was the best thing to do to the rest of those players.
03:41Well, how did Matthews be involved?
03:43If subject to international clearance, yep, he'll be involved tomorrow night.
03:47What's your pathway for him?
03:49You spoke the other day about Thomas Waddingham.
03:51Where do you see Hayden Matthews?
03:53I see Hayden as someone who needs to compete for a spot in the first team very quickly.
03:59Is he ready?
04:00I think so, yeah.
04:02That's why we've brought him over.
04:03There's plenty of parts of his game that we would like to improve.
04:07I think that we need to make sure, again, he's up to scratch with the pace of the game.
04:11That's something I thought with Tommy, we maybe would have taken a bit longer,
04:15but I thought he came on and fitted in really quickly.
04:17But yeah, we expect Hayden to get up to speed really quickly and affect the team this season.
04:23The defeats away from home, some of them heavy.
04:26It puts more pressure, surely, on you guys to win at home now?
04:30Yeah, yeah, it does.
04:33There's no doubt about that.
04:35I think that even if we'd have won the game or if we'd drawn the game at the weekend,
04:40I still think there'd be a massive amount of pressure for us to maximise our home form.
04:44Because in the league, whether you're playing at home or away, sometimes you look at it
04:48and there's always a big fixture coming up and there's always a really good opponent.
04:51So, yeah, there's no hiding away from it.
04:53I think the fact that we haven't picked up anywhere near enough points away from home
04:57has put the pressure on the home form.
04:58And thankfully, at the minute, we're rising to the occasion.
05:01And you're a very different side at home, aren't you?
05:04Yeah, it's one of the things that pleases me and annoys me at the same time.
05:07And I'm sure it does the fans as well.
05:09They're looking at two sort of completely different teams and one that would be completely
05:13unrecognisable from the weekend.
05:16So even players, I think that even if you change a few of the players, as we've done,
05:20I still don't think we should expect to necessarily see what we saw at the weekend.
05:23But that is something that is, again, it's good because we're playing well at home,
05:28but also not good enough because of what's going on away from home.
05:32Obviously, Hayden Wright was announced this morning.
05:35Any more progress on any of the transfers at the moment?
05:38Nothing before tomorrow night.
05:39There's plenty going on.
05:40Things have really started to move.
05:42So I think, yeah, before the end of the week, there should be some more activity.
05:46Are you encouraged about the progress then?
05:48Yeah, I mean, we've done four players so far and I'm really encouraged by that.
05:53The fact that we've got those two permanents over the line,
05:55we've got the two loan deals over the line.
05:58I don't think we've missed out on anyone yet.
06:00That's a real positive.
06:01Certainly, Tommy and Hayden as permanents, we've been keen on for a while
06:06and we wanted to get those through the door.
06:08Isaac and Rob, right at the top of our list in terms of loans.
06:11So, you know, both number one on the list in terms of loans.
06:13So, yeah, really pleased with the business we've done so far.
06:15So really encouraging signs with a bit more to come.
06:18Anyone close coming back from injury at all?
06:21There's no one apart from Connor, who should be available for the squad tomorrow night.
06:25So will he be named in the squad?
06:27I'll take a view on that later on this afternoon,
06:30but I was slightly cautious with it over the weekend.
06:32So I think we're probably ready to push on with it now.
06:36He's had an extra couple of days.
06:37There's no reason why he can't be involved.
06:39If not tomorrow, I suppose Burnley?
06:41Burnley will be the very, very latest.
06:43But I think the sooner we can get him back involved, the better.
06:46As long as there's no risk.
06:47And anyone else at all?
06:48No, no one else at the moment.
06:50Mark trained with us fully today, but not quite ready to get back in the squad.
06:52How is he at the moment?
06:53He's good. He's pleased to be back out there in training.
06:56I think that when you've spent that amount of time on the sidelines
06:59with a couple of injuries, he had the injury when he first came into his ankle
07:03that he picked up on international duty.
07:04And then he picked up that injury at Swansea, which is a long, long time ago now.
07:08I think when we played Swansea, maybe eight or ten weeks, something like that.
07:12So he's been out for a long time.
07:13So I think he's ready to go.
07:15How long is it going to take him to get the speed into the squad, do you feel?
07:19Up to speed? I don't know.
07:21It depends how diligent he's been with his rehab.
07:26I think he's a fit young lad.
07:28Everything that I've seen of Mark so far should tell me that everything
07:31that he's been doing in the medical room and then out on the pitch
07:34doing his rehab will be top draw because he's been at it,
07:37I think, since the moment he came in.
07:39So he should be right back to close to full fitness pretty soon.
07:43He'll need to train for a couple of weeks,
07:44probably before he can really look to get back in the side.