John Mousinho admission over Tom McIntyre form as he weighs up Portsmouth changes against Coventry
John Mousinho believes the injury-blighted start to Tom McIntyre’s Pompey career has affected his current displays.
But he remains convinced the former Reading man is a Championship-calibre performer.
It represented a 12th outing of the season for the central defender, who returned to the first-team following a seven-and-a-half month injury absence in mid-September.
And Mousinho believes that time on the sidelines, coupled with the rigours of starting 10 successive matches upon his comeback, has impacted his consistency.
Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘We watched the whole Derby video back, I don’t think anybody played well enough to warrant a pat on the back.
‘Tom will hold his hands up and certainly knows he can do better than what he did on the night. He’s part of a back four which obviously conceded four goals, so there’s plenty to improve upon.
‘The good thing we’ve got in the changing room at the moment is players that are honest about their own performances. It hasn’t been anything I’ve had to overly address because players know they need to do better.
‘That’s the reason we brought Tom into the building, not just for the potential of helping us to get out of League One, which is what we did in January, but also because we thought he would be a good long-term purchase.
‘He’s a player that played a number of games in the Championship prior to signing for us and captained Reading in the Championship a number of times. We know Tom can play at that level.
‘He’s had a long time out with the injuries, this year is about getting that consistency back into his game. Overall it would be seven months between getting injured in January and starting his first game this season.
‘That has probably taken its toll as well, as you've also seen with the likes of Regan and the physicality and the amount of games we’ve asked these players to play.
‘It’s a really good learning curve for Tom to get on top of and make sure his performances improve.’
McIntyre broke his ankle on his February debut against Northampton. When he returned to fitness this summer, he damaged his hamstring in the July behind-closed-doors friendly against Wycombe.
Now Mousinho has a decision to make whether to stick with a central-defensive partnership of McIntyre and Marlon Pack against Coventry on Saturday - or recall Ryley Towler.
He added: ‘I think Tom’s confidence is fine, everybody here is just realistic about the position we are in.
‘I don’t see a team that’s lacking in confidence, I don’t see individuals that are lacking in confidence. I see individuals in a team which is realistic about the way they want to go about their business and trying to get out of the position we are in. That’s a real positive.
‘There were probably times this season when, externally, we were written off after poor results. But we put together a few really good results and got ourselves out of the relegation zone, unfortunately not for long enough.
‘We are now in a really good position where if we do win games and if we do put results together back-to-back, then we climb the league.’