He's back. Almost: The positive news Portsmouth faithful have wanted to hear about Fratton favourite

Although the Blues boss is adamant it won’t be until next month before the central defender is ready for a first-team comeback.

It has been almost five months since the former Leeds man’s last Pompey outing in the third game of the season against Luton.

Since then he has torn tendons in each of his calves and twice broken down during attempted returns, including minutes before he was scheduled to start against Sheffield United in September.

However, Mousinho is now ready to finally welcome him back into first-team training.

He told The News: ‘Conor should be training with us at the back end of next week. Now that’s the return to training, the return to play is a different story with him.

‘He’s had 5-6 months out, so we just have to be cautious and take that one day at a time. The first step for Conor is to get a good batch of training under his belt.

‘If he trains next week, there is no way he is back returning to play before the start of February because he;s been out for such a long time. You must always take that into account.

‘Just working off a rule of thumb, if you are out for a month, usually it’s about a week’s worth of training before you are back fit.

‘If you are out for four months, you’re probably looking at four weeks, maybe not even quite that extreme with Conor, but probably in and around that timescale.’

Shaughnessy’s most recent injury set-back was in November, when he tore his other calf while straight line running in training.

It has been a bleak period for the talented central defender, who has also been the subject of a number of wild conspiracy theories, some suggesting he isn’t actually injured.

The 28-year-old has been sorely missed from the Blues side, with Marlon Pack forced to stand-in, while Rob Atkinson has now arrived on loan from Bristol City to bolster the position.

Mousinho added: ‘From our point of view, I don’t think we can do much differently this time around. Once Conor’s back and once he’s ready to train, we will definitely monitor him in training, as we did last time.

‘He had a relatively light couple of days going into the Sheffield United game - and then injured himself again in the warm-up not really doing much.

‘He is taking a slightly different approach to his rehab this time in terms of the advice he’s got and some of the rehab he’s been doing off the back of seeing a specialist. Hopefully we’ll have a different outcome.’