Breaking: Portsmouth boss addresses links with ex-Newcastle man as Blues eye potential centre-half transfer business

But the Blues boss won’t rule out strengthening the centre-half position before the end of the transfer window.

With Mark O’Mohony’s loan arrival from Brighton imminent, Pompey are now seeking to address other areas of their squad.

Defender Dummett has been linked with a Fratton Park switch after leaving Newcastle in the summer following 13 seasons with the Premier League club.

Mousinho is badly short in central defence at present, with Conor Shaughnessy, Regan Poole and Tom McIntyre all missing last weekend’s 2-2 draw at Middlesbrough.

Yet while he has played down reports of interest in the 32-year-old Dummett, they may yet recruit a centre-half before Friday’s deadline day.

Mousinho told The News: ‘We are not after Paul at the moment. He is a fantastic player, he has a really good pedigree and played in the Premier League for a number of years.

‘The players that are available for free always interest us, but there’s nothing in that at the moment.

‘It’s an interesting one because we have four centre-backs in the building who we are pleased with, but two of them aren’t fit at the minute and Shocks not being available last weekend made it seem like we are thin on the ground.

‘We are monitoring the market, that’s the best way to say it. We are not actively looking for anything, but if something does come up, we are not going to definitely rule it out.

‘There are some positions, for example, that we are done, that’s most positions now, but we will keep an open eye on that one.

‘We are hopeful we have Tom (McIntyre) back for West Brom and hopefully Regan is probably back two weeks after that.

‘What we don’t want is to give ourselves a problem at the back where we’ve got too many centre-backs for too few spots. We have to balance the two off and then go from there.’

Right-back Jordan Williams had to partner Ryley Towler in the centre of defence at Middlesbrough last weekend.

But Mousinho believes some of his injured defenders are not far from a return.

He added: ‘Jordan at centre-half isn't the long-term solution for us. Unfortunately we have had a few injuries and it has been a bit of a makeshift back four.

‘But once we get through the weekend then hopefully we have a couple of players back and the backline looks a bit different.’