'Deserved': Portsmouth boss explains shock selection of duo in Coventry victory

Harry Clout and Michael Ani were named among the Blues’ substitutes for the 4-1 victory over Coventry.

The promising duo had caught the eye of the watching John Mousinho during the extra-time defeat to Leeds in the FA Youth Cup earlier in the week.

Clout had last been on Pompey’s bench for two Championship matches in August, before going on loan to Bognor and suffering an ankle injury which sidelined him for two months before his Leeds comeback.

While Ani is a 16-year-old right-back who has started 10 times for the Academy this season, including an excellent display in the 3-2 Leeds loss.

Mousinho had turned to the pair with injury and illness impacting his squad - but he is adamant they deserved their opportunity.

He told The News: ‘Obviously we’ve got a few injuries, but we don’t just chuck Academy players on for the sake of it. What we want to do is make sure they have earned it.

‘It has been a good week in terms of timing for the Academy because we actually got to watch them in action and saw how good they were against a really good Leeds side.

‘We’ve had a lot of experience and exposure with Clouty over the past six months, so bringing him back in was a straightforward decision because he was good the other night.

‘With Mike, I thought he was excellent against Leeds, he deserved it, and he trained with us a couple of times last week.

‘He’s a first-year scholar, there’s loads of promise there. He has to keep working hard, keeping his head down whether he’s with the first-team or not, and make sure he takes advantage of opportunities.

‘We want those Academy boys to know they aren’t sitting on the bench just to make up numbers - it’s because they deserve to be there.

‘We always speak to Sam (Hudson), James (Barlow) and Greg (Miller) about who is performing best at the time and they had no hesitation recommending the pair of them.

‘They now have to push on and push on and make sure they do it again.’

Pompey had fresh absences in Regan Poole (hamstring), Elias Sorensen (illness), Harvey Blair (knee) and Abdoulaye Kamara (toe) against Coventry.

That opened the door to the teenage duo, with Ani spending two days training with the first-team squad in the build-up to the Championship clash.

Mousinho added: ‘We usually bring players across at certain times. Following the Leeds game on that Monday night, when we reconvened on Wednesday we brought Mike over, but didn’t think it was right to bring Harry over as well.

‘It was the fact Harry hadn’t played in such a long time and he was on a second day recovery. Then on Friday, Mike came over but Harry had his driving test.

‘That's why when you get the opportunity, you have to take them whenever they arise. It might be 10 minutes that I get to drift over and watch an Academy game on a Saturday morning.’