Portsmouth’s plan over letting players leave amid late-window interest in squad

But John Mousinho explained the Blues are now dialling down their recruitment work, after getting their business done quickly.

Pompey this week brought in their 13th summer arrival in Alex Robertson, with the squad now fully formed.

An eye will be kept on any potential loans popping up in the next couple of weeks, but Mousinho explained it’s more a watching brief for his club.

Pompey will consider any bids for players which come out of the blue, however, if it allows a chance to make the squad stronger with a replacement.

Mousinho said: ‘Ultimately, if any curveballs come in we’re keeping an open mind.

‘We’re never going to close ourselves off, say we’re done this early in August and there’s nothing to see here. That would be pretty naive.

‘But we’ve changed recruitment strategy from being in that real active mode, looking in every direction and spinning a thousand plates at one time.

‘Now we’re more seeing what lands on our doorstep.’

Mousinho admitted the strength of Pompey’s position when it comes to recruitment has caught even him by surprise.

The head coach explained he thought the Blues would still have more work to complete at this stage of proceedings.

He added: ‘It’s a pretty healthy place to be and, to be honest, much further on than we expected it to be.

‘Maybe we thought there’d be a bit of work to be done towards the back end of August.

‘A lot of the groundwork was done early on. Announcing five or six signings in the first week put us in a really strong position to pick off one or two here and there, every time we had a bit of leeway to do so. It’s worked really well.’