Injury fears allayed over Portsmouth pair after missing Bognor pre-season encounter

While John Mousinho believes Kusini Yengi and Gavin Whyte may finally make their anticipated entrances this weekend.

Bishop and Saydee were both absent from Tuesday night’s 1-1 draw at the Rocks, with both sidelined with an ankle issue.

In their absence, Sam Folarin and Koby Mottoh were called up from the Academy and each handed 45 minutes in keeping with the rest of the squad.

Joe Rafferty was also missing through the tight calf which forced him off early on in last week’s friendly against Europa FC.

The right-back is expected to return to full training next week, ruling him out of the trips to Gosport (Friday) and the Hawks (Saturday).

However, according to Mousinho, Bishop and Saydee could be back to feature in one of those fixtures.

The Blues head coach told The News: ‘Joe Rafferty picked up a knock the other day through his tight calf, hopefully he will be back to full training next week.

‘Christian Saydee rolled his ankle and Colby Bishop also rolled his ankle, but nothing too severe, a couple of days for both of them.

‘We might see them feature in either of the weekend games, we’ll see how they are on Thursday and go from there.

‘In both of their cases, if it was a league game against Bognor we would probably have strapped them up and got them out there – but there’s no point in risking anything this early in pre-season.

‘If we make injuries worse then we’ve got a problem on our hands from a club perspective, so it’s certainly not worth risking.’

Meanwhile, Joe Morrell and Paddy Lane were handed their first pre-season outings in the second half at Nyewood Lane.

Although the other two members – Whyte and Yengi – have yet to be involved in match action.

Mousinho added: ‘They are not quite ready yet to play these games again.

‘There was some heavy travel last week, not just Spain but with Kusini coming from Australia and Gavin from Northern Ireland, it was just that big disruption and upheaval.

‘What we want to do is make sure we reintroduce them properly and I certainly think we’ll see at least one of them feature at the weekend, hopefully both.’