Concerned John Mousinho admits essential Portsmouth's rethink over friendlies

Pompey’s soaring injury problems have forced any prospective behind-closed-doors friendly to be shelved - for now.

The Blues last month arranged a match with Aldershot to provide vital minutes for fringe players including Matt Macey, Anthony Scully, Gavin Whyte and Christian Saydee.

That was scrapped with pitches frozen at their Copnor Road training ground. Instead the first-team trained on the 4G playing surface at the John Jenkins Stadium, with John Mousinho deciding against also switching the friendly there.

Pompey’s head coach last week contemplated organising another friendly for his squad, only to opt against it fearing possible ramifications.

He told The News: ‘At the minute, we are taking it game-by-game because we certainly don’t want to arrange anything then have to pull out.

‘We had the option last week and I decided against it. With the travel and the amount of games we’d had - and the fact we knew about a couple of the injuries which came out on the Wednesday - we didn’t think it was the right thing to do.

‘A couple of lads could probably do with a bit of game time at the moment if we did put a game on, but I didn’t think it would be beneficial for the majority of the squad.

‘At the moment, I just think it’s quite good in terms of what we are doing in training on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They are properly intense and sometimes these games can slow down a bit.

‘A friendly is not something we are going to rule out between now and the end of the season, but at the moment the squad is in a decent enough place to just keep going with training.

‘We have picked up the majority of our injuries in games as well. We don't want to put players out there and increase the risk unless we thought the reward was there.’

Meanwhile, Mousinho has dismissed the notion that a training ground dome would have saved the Aldershot fixture

The former Oxford United defender is adamant he didn’t want the fixture taking place on an artificial playing surface.

He added: ‘We trained on the John Jenkins Stadium 4G that Tuesday and had the option to also play the game there. It was my decision not to do that.

‘I think the 4G is great if you can control a training session and control timings, dimensions, and the intensity of the session.

‘I’m sure we would have been okay, but when you take a couple of those controllable factors out of it, playing on that 4G becomes a bit too risky.

‘I never liked playing on 4G, although I didn't mind training on it. When I was involved in the PFA, we voted against bringing 4G pitches into the Football League. I don’t like watching it as a fan and I don’t like playing on it as a player.’