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Portmouth boss John Mousinho previewing Millwall clash
The News, Portsmouth
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26/11/2024
John Mousinho's press conference head of Pompey's Championship encounter with Millwall.
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Sports
Transcript
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00:00
So John, did you see the Blackburn pitch? Can you tell us what it was like, please?
00:06
Yeah, I went along on Saturday morning, so I got a call when we were just at the back end of having breakfast at the hotel,
00:12
saying, can we get down to the pitch, because the referee wants to have a pitch inspection at 10.45.
00:16
We ended up postponing it until 11 and myself, John Eustace and the referee went out.
00:20
The 95% of the pitch was fine, it was completely playable, there were just patches in the middle of the pitch
00:26
that had accumulated pretty significant rainwater on it, and there were puddles growing,
00:34
the ball wasn't bouncing, the ball wasn't rolling.
00:36
And the issue was that that was only going to get worse until then in kick-off.
00:41
So from the sidelines, the pitch looked fine, but when you got on it, it was really heavy and the water really had accumulated.
00:46
And I think there were multiple factors around the week and around a few noises of the pitch at Ewood Park
00:52
that made it one of those that unfortunately had to be called off.
00:55
It's relatively rare that a game gets called off for Pompey.
00:59
Is that frustrating for yourselves, bearing in mind you prepped for that after so long without a game?
01:04
Yeah, massively frustrating. I think it's the first game that's been called off since I've been here.
01:09
And yeah, really frustrating. We wanted to play, we were up there, we were ready to play.
01:13
We'd obviously travelled on the Friday, we'd done all the preparation for the two weeks prior going into the Blackburn game,
01:18
and when you've got two free weeks, we didn't necessarily spend that first week prepping for the Blackburn game,
01:23
but certainly the build-up for the second week, we had a lot of time to look at the opposition
01:28
and to look at how we were going to play against them. So we felt like we were going into it in a really good spot.
01:32
It's just one of those things, unfortunately, that we've not been able to play the game.
01:36
We're going to have to rearrange it at some point and go from there.
01:39
Obviously, Millwall on Wednesday night, that'll be 18 days since you last played as well.
01:45
Yeah, and I think it's one of those where it's hard to know at this moment whether that's going to be a positive,
01:52
a negative or just make absolutely no difference. I tend to think it's going to make no difference, really.
01:56
I think if you're us, we're sitting here thinking, oh, I wish we'd played at the weekend,
02:01
because obviously we wanted to have the game and it gives us a bit of momentum going into Wednesday.
02:06
I think if you're Millwall, they're going, oh, aren't they lucky, they've had a weekend's worth of rest
02:10
and we've had a tough game at home to Sunderland and then we've got to make the trip down to Portsmouth.
02:15
So I think there's many, many different ways of seeing it. I don't think it's going to affect the game at all, to be honest.
02:20
I think it's going to be a really good clash, regardless of what's happened previously.
02:26
You've won your last home game, obviously, against Preston. How important will Threaten Part B be?
02:32
Because you've not got a bad away record overall, have you really?
02:35
I think that we played the games, we lost the games against Stoke and Cardiff, so they're there on the record.
02:42
But other than that, I think our home form and away form hasn't been too dissimilar.
02:47
It was my first win away from home at QPR and we put in some really, really good performances away from home,
02:51
not least a couple of those ones against the big boys early on.
02:54
So that's one of those things. I think we've got to focus on keeping our away form,
03:00
or the away performances as they are, maybe not the form, because the last two games at Hull and Plymouth
03:06
I've been really impressed with the performance levels.
03:08
So we've got to keep going with the away performance, but probably got to step everything up at home
03:12
and make sure that we're much better than we have been.
03:15
And I was really pleased with what we did at Preston.
03:17
But I think prior to that, there's been a bit more that we haven't necessarily left out there.
03:23
I think there's much more to come from us at home.
03:25
And when we get Threaten Part going, it's an incredibly intimidating atmosphere, I think, to players as an away player.
03:31
I think it's an amazing backing that we have as home players and as home staff.
03:37
And when we get things going and when we give the fans something to cheer about,
03:40
as we did do against Preston, it's a really brilliant place to play.
03:43
And I think we need to pick up more points.
03:45
What aspects of your home performances need to improve then?
03:48
I think that if you look at the games that we've done well,
03:51
so I would probably classify, we haven't had a huge amount of games, to be honest, at home over the past few weeks.
03:57
But if you look at the two that stand out in my head,
03:59
I thought we were really good against Oxford because we put them under pressure early on
04:02
and we kept that pressure on and we gave away a sloppy goal.
04:05
But I thought we were relentless in the way that we were at Preston.
04:08
We played on the front foot throughout.
04:10
And the Preston game was very, very similar.
04:12
I think we started the game really well.
04:14
We were on the front foot. We put Preston under a lot of pressure.
04:17
That was probably the one game this season where we've actually got what we deserved
04:20
after a decent enough opening spell.
04:22
And we didn't come away scratching our heads after that.
04:25
That's what we've got to do, I think, better is sustain that pressure that we may build up in certain games
04:31
and take advantage of moments as well.
04:33
The West Brom game at home, I remember having to sustain pressure for 45 minutes in the first half
04:37
and we couldn't put the ball in the back of the net.
04:38
And sides like West Brom then go and punish you in the second half.
04:41
But we gave ourselves that buffer against Preston,
04:43
where even though we did concede a goal quite soon after half-time,
04:46
because we had the two-goal lead because of what we'd done in the first half, we were OK.
04:49
So I think it's just about sustaining that consistent pressure on opposition's goal
04:53
and making sure it's a really tough place to play.
04:56
The postponement of the Blackburn game, does that help at all in the injury front?
04:59
Nothing on the injury front, no.
05:01
It's not going to make an ounce of difference to the squad going into Wednesday.
05:03
We've got the same squad to select from.
05:05
A few of the injured lads. Jacob Farrell, how's he?
05:09
Jacob's alright, he's out on the grass.
05:11
He's not a million miles away but he's not returned to full training yet.
05:17
So we're still not looking at anything imminent in terms of his return to play.
05:23
How frustrating has it been with him?
05:25
Because he's barely trained or played since he's been at this football club.
05:28
Yeah, really frustrating.
05:29
He picked up an injury really early on when he came over and he was out for a while with that.
05:34
He came back, he had a good couple of training weeks, played against Sheffield United
05:37
and then injured himself in training a couple of days later.
05:39
So he's only played one game.
05:42
He's been available for a couple more but he wasn't in the squad.
05:44
So he's only played one game, hardly trained.
05:46
And I think it's always frustrating for any player to get injured,
05:50
particularly when you're a new signing at a football club,
05:52
looking to come over and really make an impact.
05:54
So Jacob will be chomping at the bit to get back and I'm sure he'll be fit and ready to go when he is.
05:59
I looked at his stats and he played quite a lot of games in Australia as well.
06:05
And also he came off the back of a successful season with him straight over to here.
06:09
What's the issue with it? Is it the same injury or is it a recurrence of an old one?
06:13
No, it's the same injury that he picked up pre-season.
06:17
He's managed to just tweak his MCL again.
06:21
So it's the same injury.
06:22
One of those things when we look at injuries, we spoke about them extensively I think last week.
06:26
And where we look at internally and obviously the eyes externally looking at things,
06:31
it's very, very difficult sometimes to pinpoint injuries.
06:33
Jacob's injury record coming into the season was very good.
06:36
He played a lot of games over the past couple of seasons
06:38
and unfortunately he's picked up a couple of back-to-back injuries that kept him out for a long time.
06:43
From what you've seen of him so far over here, what can he impact on the team?
06:48
I think the only thing we can judge him on is that Sheffield United game
06:52
where he grew into the game really well.
06:54
I think he ended up coming off the pitch to applaud it from everybody in the stadium
07:00
and everybody that watched it.
07:02
I think he had probably a tough opening half an hour against Raksaki who was excellent.
07:07
I think he was one of the best wingers at this level.
07:08
But then Jacob got to grips with that and looked very, very confident as the game went on
07:11
and grew into the game really well in the second half.
07:13
And probably should have come away from the game having scored the winner from that corner
07:17
and possibly picking up Man of the Match in a clean sheet.
07:19
So I think a bit more of the same really.
07:22
That's all we can judge him on at the moment.
07:23
And if that's anything to go by then, I think we've signed a good player.
07:27
Any more injury setbacks at all?
07:29
No, everything's as it was going into the game.
07:31
So none of the injuries are going to be back and ready to be involved against Millwall
07:36
and we've picked up no new injuries.
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