'It's impossible' - Portsmouth boss John Mousinho makes squad admission ahead of Barnsley visit - and reveals his solution to key concern

Pompey travel to Barnsley tonight with the head coach having to decide whether to recall the previously suspended Joe Rafferty and Joe Morrell for the game at Oakwell.

Christian Saydee’s potential return from injury will also be on Mousinho’s mind as he looks to continue his new-look side’s unbeaten start to the season.

That’s amid a background where the likes of Sean Raggett and Ryley Towler wait patiently for recalls, Ben Stevenson kicks his heels wishing for some League One action, and Jack Sparkes hopes his impressive start to life at Fratton Park is finally translated into regular minutes.

Competition for places will, of course, be ramped up even further when Kusini Yengi, Anthony Scully and Tom Lowery return from their respective injuries injury and Tino Anjorin gets up to speed fitness-wise.

But that’s a scenario Mousinho and sporting director Rich Hughes were fully aware off as they oversaw a Blues overhaul in the summer. They wanted to build a squad capable of competing at the very top of League One.

They knew there was no guarantee of keeping everyone happy, if they did. Mousinho is comfortable with that. But that doesn’t mean he’ll endorse an unhappy camp.

Indeed, he insisted a key part of his job was to ensure everyone knows their importance and are treated fairly.

He told The News: ‘I think it’s impossible to keep everyone happy because there are ultimately 11 players who start a match day and the rest of them don’t.

‘There’s a couple who will understand it and don’t mind having a rest. And, again, it’s the nature of the game – whenever I was not in the side I would grumble and think I should be in the team. But that’s a good thing.

‘The best way we try to keep everyone happy is just being as fair as possible. Sometimes we are, sometimes we’re not, sometimes football is not 100-per-cent fair. I spoke to Zak Swanson after the Forest Green game – he scored, we won and I left him out of the squad the following weekend. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t even travel down to Leyton Orient.

‘It’s hard to keep players happy in that instance. The only thing I would say to them is that I’m not lying to them when I say you’re much closer than you think.

‘I’ve always spoken about this in both pre and post-match press – the players who haven’t been playing are a lot closer than they think and as we go through the season we’ll see a lot more solid evidence of that.

‘Conor Shaughnessy is always talked about (in that respect), Zak Swanson has been the latest one, Terry Devlin has now come in and made his league debut.

‘You’re an injury, a suspension, a change in form, anything away from getting into the side and you’ve got to keep yourself ready, even if you’re unhappy with the way things are.’

Mousinho said he was pleased with the strength and depth of his squad. So much so that he feels changes to his starting line-up don’t make the Blues any weaker.

‘We don’t really see any pitfalls of bringing in any player to change the team,’ he added.

‘Of course there are going to be players with certain strengths and weakness but we don’t think bringing anyone in from the squad makes us any weaker.

‘That’s down to the way we tried to build the squad over the summer with the recruitment that we’ve done here.

‘It’s not always possible but we want to have 22-24 players competing for first-team spots.’