Farewell to Manchester City starlet - but gutted Portsmouth boss focuses ahead

John Mousinho believes Alex Robertson has played his final Pompey game this season.

Yet while still contracted for the remainder of the campaign, owners Tornante have pledged the loanee’s wages will not be taken out of the Blues’ budget.

Pompey’s worst fears were confirmed on Wednesday, with Manchester City’s medical department declaring Robertson’s hamstring injury will rule him out for around three months.

Despite not viewed as season-ending, Mousinho isn’t banking on the talented 20-year-old returning to first-team action in time to aid their promotion push.

As a consequence, the Blues will now seek a replacement, prioritising an attacking central midfielder.

Although, with Pompey not having the option to cancel the season-long loan, he will officially remain at Fratton Park for now.

Mousinho told The News: ‘Alex had been in such good form, such a good performer through the season, it’s a really bitter blow for everyone involved.

‘There's every chance he gets back and is fit, outside and probably training, but the severity of the injury means he’d be very lucky to be available for any games this season.

‘If he is, then it’s a bonus. We are making sure that Robbo gets the best possible treatment first and foremost and gets back nice, strong and fit - but we don’t think that’s going to be this season.

‘We will obviously have a full rundown on what we think we could possibly have done differently or better.

‘Honestly, I have done it myself, with injuries you can look at a thousand different things. You can look at training minutes, the position of your car seat, your back, how your neck felt in the morning, all of these things we must take into account.

‘But if you go on a hunt to try to pin down too many things, we could find a thousand different reasons as to why it happened.

‘We felt he was good enough to go into training on a Thursday, he has pretty much trained every single session this year, he didn’t have a huge workload over Christmas because when he did play he came off in three of those four games.

‘Injuries unfortunately happen and we must look ahead.’

With Robertson continuing to be contracted until the season’s end, Pompey presently have two remaining loan slots.

Although Mousinho is encouraged that chairman Michael Eisner has given the green light to discount the Australian’s wages from the playing budget.

He added: ‘We don’t have the power to cancel the loan, although it doesn’t actually make a difference to us because of the finance involved. 

‘Not to be flippant with money, one of the benefits of the ownership and the way they are backing us at the moment is they have been really clear about saying that if Alex is injured and the loan isn’t terminated, then they’re not going to look at that money and say that’s part of the budget eaten up..’