Skip to player
Skip to main content
Skip to footer
Search
Connect
Watch fullscreen
Like
Comments
Bookmark
Share
Add to Playlist
Report
Pompey v Millwall: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
Follow
27/01/2025
Pompey boss John Mousinho talks to The News ahead of the Blues' Championship game against Millwall
Category
🥇
Sports
Transcript
Display full video transcript
00:00
John, 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?
00:09
Yeah, they should be absolutely fine.
00:12
We obviously have got to make a few decisions on team selection,
00:15
but that was the point of Saturday to make sure that we, first of all,
00:21
protected all the players from anything that we needed to protect them from in terms of injuries.
00:24
And, yeah, just to rotate the side,
00:27
I thought they'd have been tired if they'd played at the weekend.
00:29
So, about giving them a few extra days, it should really help.
00:32
Obviously, you rested on the starting line, have you still used four of them on Friday?
00:36
Yeah, I thought that the important thing when you do that is that if you look at where we were on Wednesday,
00:42
so off the back of Wednesday night, we didn't do anything Thursday,
00:45
very, very little on Friday in terms of physical preparation.
00:49
If the players had then gone, nothing on Saturday, nothing on Sunday,
00:51
we didn't do a huge amount today.
00:52
I didn't want to have that sort of five-day break without any football.
00:55
So I think it was really important to get that spike,
00:58
get that physical spike in there.
00:59
It was very similar, I think, in the Bristol City game as well,
01:02
when even at 3-0, the game was probably gone.
01:05
We still wanted to get players on the pitch to make sure that they don't come into the game
01:09
if selected on Tuesday and they're completely rusted.
01:12
You rotated a couple of times, not that much, but a couple of times.
01:16
Do you see that happening again for the rest of the season?
01:18
Are there pictures ingested like that from anywhere?
01:21
Probably not to the extent that we did it at the weekend.
01:23
I think there's certainly plenty of scope for making minor changes here and there,
01:27
but I thought that was probably a wholesale change, I think, that we made at the weekend.
01:31
Especially off the back of two wins,
01:33
you probably wouldn't expect that many changes off the back of two really good wins.
01:36
So I don't necessarily foresee that between now and the rest of the season.
01:40
When I look at the schedule, we've got that busy period around Easter,
01:43
but nothing that we faced so far in January.
01:46
It's been unique in terms of what I've seen as a player and a coach.
01:49
I think it's almost different when you say that you have the data to gauge a player's fitness
01:55
and susceptibility to injury and things like that.
01:58
Yeah, we've got all the data and the data is really useful, don't get me wrong.
02:01
We use it, I'm not going to say we completely ignore it.
02:03
We've also got the eye and I did look at players off the back of that game on Wednesday night
02:07
against Stoke and thought, we've got such high output.
02:09
And regardless of what the GPS units were telling me,
02:12
I knew that the output had been really high.
02:14
A couple of the players just looked absolutely knackered,
02:17
they were dead on their feet, we'd asked everything of them.
02:19
And we didn't necessarily make a raft of changes in terms of subs towards the back end of the Stoke game
02:24
because I thought we need to win the game.
02:26
We need to make sure we get the points at home.
02:27
We need to secure that.
02:28
And I didn't think it was worth doing.
02:30
I thought it was well worth making sure that we won the game.
02:32
So, it was a combination really.
02:34
And then we speak to players on the Wednesday, we speak to players again on Thursday,
02:38
speak to players again on the Friday to see how they are.
02:40
We just take everything into account when we're making those decisions.
02:43
And presumably following that data prevents injuries?
02:47
Yeah, for the most part.
02:48
I mean, it is a guide, I think, but it doesn't necessarily stop you from picking up injuries.
02:55
We've seen that this season where we've looked at training load,
02:59
we've looked at game load and it still hasn't made a difference
03:01
because we still picked up injuries doing very little.
03:04
Shox was a really, really good example where when he came back into the squad,
03:08
it wasn't like he'd had this massive sort of training week
03:11
and then came into the matchday squad and injured himself in the warm-up because of that.
03:16
So, some of them are just, you know, unpreventable.
03:18
But when there are some red flags in terms of what the data is telling you,
03:21
it's worth, first of all, listening to it.
03:24
It's then worth speaking to the player.
03:26
It's then worth taking what you see on the eye and then going from there.
03:29
There's been plenty of times throughout football and sort of throughout my time as a head coach
03:34
where players have had a massive output, but you just take a different view on it
03:37
because you think they're going to be all right at the weekend.
03:39
I thought it was the best thing to do to the rest of those players.
03:41
Well, how did Matthews be involved?
03:43
If subject to international clearance, yep, he'll be involved tomorrow night.
03:47
What's your pathway for him?
03:49
You spoke the other day about Thomas Waddingham.
03:51
Where do you see Hayden Matthews?
03:53
I see Hayden as someone who needs to compete for a spot in the first team very quickly.
03:59
Is he ready?
04:00
I think so, yeah.
04:02
That's why we've brought him over.
04:03
There's plenty of parts of his game that we would like to improve.
04:07
I think that we need to make sure, again, he's up to scratch with the pace of the game.
04:11
That's something I thought with Tommy, we maybe would have taken a bit longer,
04:15
but I thought he came on and fitted in really quickly.
04:17
But yeah, we expect Hayden to get up to speed really quickly and affect the team this season.
04:23
The defeats away from home, some of them heavy.
04:26
It puts more pressure, surely, on you guys to win at home now?
04:30
Yeah, yeah, it does.
04:33
There's no doubt about that.
04:35
I think that even if we'd have won the game or if we'd drawn the game at the weekend,
04:40
I still think there'd be a massive amount of pressure for us to maximise our home form.
04:44
Because in the league, whether you're playing at home or away, sometimes you look at it
04:48
and there's always a big fixture coming up and there's always a really good opponent.
04:51
So, yeah, there's no hiding away from it.
04:53
I think the fact that we haven't picked up anywhere near enough points away from home
04:57
has put the pressure on the home form.
04:58
And thankfully, at the minute, we're rising to the occasion.
05:01
And you're a very different side at home, aren't you?
05:04
Yeah, it's one of the things that pleases me and annoys me at the same time.
05:07
And I'm sure it does the fans as well.
05:09
They're looking at two sort of completely different teams and one that would be completely
05:13
unrecognisable from the weekend.
05:16
So even players, I think that even if you change a few of the players, as we've done,
05:20
I still don't think we should expect to necessarily see what we saw at the weekend.
05:23
But that is something that is, again, it's good because we're playing well at home,
05:28
but also not good enough because of what's going on away from home.
05:32
Obviously, Hayden Wright was announced this morning.
05:35
Any more progress on any of the transfers at the moment?
05:38
Nothing before tomorrow night.
05:39
There's plenty going on.
05:40
Things have really started to move.
05:42
So I think, yeah, before the end of the week, there should be some more activity.
05:46
Are you encouraged about the progress then?
05:48
Yeah, I mean, we've done four players so far and I'm really encouraged by that.
05:53
The fact that we've got those two permanents over the line,
05:55
we've got the two loan deals over the line.
05:58
I don't think we've missed out on anyone yet.
06:00
That's a real positive.
06:01
Certainly, Tommy and Hayden as permanents, we've been keen on for a while
06:06
and we wanted to get those through the door.
06:08
Isaac and Rob, right at the top of our list in terms of loans.
06:11
So, you know, both number one on the list in terms of loans.
06:13
So, yeah, really pleased with the business we've done so far.
06:15
So really encouraging signs with a bit more to come.
06:18
Anyone close coming back from injury at all?
06:21
There's no one apart from Connor, who should be available for the squad tomorrow night.
06:25
So will he be named in the squad?
06:27
I'll take a view on that later on this afternoon,
06:30
but I was slightly cautious with it over the weekend.
06:32
So I think we're probably ready to push on with it now.
06:36
He's had an extra couple of days.
06:37
There's no reason why he can't be involved.
06:39
If not tomorrow, I suppose Burnley?
06:41
Burnley will be the very, very latest.
06:43
But I think the sooner we can get him back involved, the better.
06:46
As long as there's no risk.
06:47
And anyone else at all?
06:48
No, no one else at the moment.
06:50
Mark trained with us fully today, but not quite ready to get back in the squad.
06:52
How is he at the moment?
06:53
He's good. He's pleased to be back out there in training.
06:56
I think that when you've spent that amount of time on the sidelines
06:59
with a couple of injuries, he had the injury when he first came into his ankle
07:03
that he picked up on international duty.
07:04
And then he picked up that injury at Swansea, which is a long, long time ago now.
07:08
I think when we played Swansea, maybe eight or ten weeks, something like that.
07:12
So he's been out for a long time.
07:13
So I think he's ready to go.
07:15
How long is it going to take him to get the speed into the squad, do you feel?
07:19
Up to speed? I don't know.
07:21
It depends how diligent he's been with his rehab.
07:26
I think he's a fit young lad.
07:28
Everything that I've seen of Mark so far should tell me that everything
07:31
that he's been doing in the medical room and then out on the pitch
07:34
doing his rehab will be top draw because he's been at it,
07:37
I think, since the moment he came in.
07:39
So he should be right back to close to full fitness pretty soon.
07:43
He'll need to train for a couple of weeks,
07:44
probably before he can really look to get back in the side.
Recommended
0:34
|
Up next
A cat attacked two dogs fastest kill
Jarrell Eva
10/09/2015
11:01
Millwall v Portsmouth: John Mousinho pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
02/04/2025
19:39
Portsmouth v Hull: John Mousinho press conference
The News, Portsmouth
30/04/2025
9:10
Pompey v Sheffield United: John Mousinho press conference
The News, Portsmouth
05/02/2025
16:05
Blackburn Rovers v Pompey: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
13/01/2025
13:04
Sunderland v Pompey: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
02/01/2025
7:30
Pompey 1-0 Blackburn: John Mousinho's post-match reaction
The News, Portsmouth
29/03/2025
9:18
Portsmouth v Blackburn Rovers: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
26/03/2025
7:40
Portmouth boss John Mousinho previewing Millwall clash
The News, Portsmouth
26/11/2024
9:12
Pompey v Swansea: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
31/12/2024
18:54
Pompey v Stoke: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
20/01/2025
13:38
John Mousinho previews Portsmouth clash with Middlesbrough
The News, Portsmouth
16/01/2025
4:05
Millwall v Portsmouth: John Mousinho's Championship verdict
The News, Portsmouth
05/04/2025
12:48
Pompey v Burnley: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
29/01/2025
7:41
Portsmouth v Cardiff: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
10/02/2025
7:55
Oxford United v Pompey: John Mousinho press conference
The News, Portsmouth
12/02/2025
11:28
Pompey v Norwich: John Mousinho's pre-match thoughts
The News, Portsmouth
09/12/2024
5:11
Portsmouth 2-1 QPR: John Mousinho's post-match reaction
The News, Portsmouth
22/02/2025
23:57
Derby County v Pompey: John Mousinho's pre-match press conference
The News, Portsmouth
12/12/2024
7:32
Pompey 1-1 Hull: John Mousinho's post-match verdict
The News, Portsmouth
03/05/2025
11:15
Pompey boss John Mousinho's press conference ahead of Preston clash
The News, Portsmouth
06/11/2024
4:56
Chesterfield 1-0 Pompey: John Mousinho's post-match verdict
The News, Portsmouth
05/11/2023
11:27
Pompey boss John Mousinho's press conference ahead of Oxford United clash
The News, Portsmouth
03/10/2024
4:53
Pompey v Cambridge United: John Mousinho's pre-match thoughts
The News, Portsmouth
12/02/2024
9:34
Pompey v Cheltenham: John Mousinho's pre-match throughts
The News, Portsmouth
17/08/2023