'A pleasure': Portsmouth boss' ringing endorsement of Blues forgotten man after Fratton exit

Ben Stevenson ended his frustrating 18-month stay on Thursday after cancelling his Blues contract and moving to Cambridge United.

The midfielder started just one league game during his time at Pompey - and hadn’t featured at all for the last five-and-a-half months.

Nonetheless, despite not being registered in Mousinho’s 25-man Football League squad and surplus to requirements, the former Coventry continued to train the first-team until his departure.

And his former head coach has applauded Stevenson’s professionalism until the very end.

Mousinho told The News: ‘One thing we wanted to do with the likes of Ben and Tom (Lowery) was to make sure we gave them opportunities to actually train and keep going, keeping themselves as fit as possible.

‘It wasn’t anything to do with us falling out with Ben or us not wanting Ben to do well. Ben was great for us last season - whether he played or didn’t play - and we are really pleased he’s got his move.

‘He was a pleasure to work with. I suppose it could have been very different with a player that knows he’s not going to play any minutes and isn’t going to contribute and is probably on his way out.

‘But credit to Ben and credit to Tom, they never showed an ounce of lack of professionalism.

‘He had an impact, he played games last season, not as many as he would have liked, but he played when we needed him to play.

‘Ben was a big influence in the dressing room in terms of his professionalism, making sure he trained well every day, and always provided that competition in the middle of the park.

‘It’s really, really important that whenever you have a successful team, you have good competition - and Ben provided that.’

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Stevenson featured just 12 times after arriving in June 2023 following his exit from Forest Green Rovers.

He has now joined League One strugglers Cambridge on a deal until the end of the season, with the opportunity to earn a longer stay.

Thursday also saw Tom Lowery depart Fratton Park, albeit on loan for the remainder of the campaign at former club Crewe.

And Mousinho has backed Stevenson to make an impact at the Abbey Stadium.

He added: ‘He will do really well at Cambridge, certainly from what we saw last season. It’s easy for us to say that because we trained him every day and there were limited opportunities for people to actually see what he was about in league games.

‘And he is easily good enough for the level.’