John Mousinho explains gap in Pompey pre-season friendlies following 9-1 thumping of Crawley

The Blues played a behind-closed-doors game against League Two Crawley at their Hilsea training base on Saturday.

But it came seven days after their last summer outing – a 1-0 victory against the Hawks at Westleigh Park on July 15 – leaving excited fans with withdrawal symptoms following a busy transfer window that has seen 11 new faces added to the first-team ranks.

That decision paid off handsomely, though, with Pompey thumping Scott Lindsey’s side 9-1 thanks to goals from Kusini Yengi (3), Anthony Scully (2), Colby Bishop, Zak Swanson, Tom Lowery and Christian Saydee.

The game, which was not publicised beforehand, also got some much-need minutes into the legs of the players, with their League One opener against Bristol Rovers less than two weeks away. Yengi, Gavin Whyte, Regan Poole and Abu Kamara all featured for the first time following their respective arrivals. Meanwhile, Bishop was back in action after an ankle complaint.

Mousinho admitted his players looked sharper than previous pre-season games as the goals rained in against Crawley.

And he put that down to an important week spent wholly on the training pitch, which he believes was essential given the number of new faces he’s introduced and a need to focus on technical issues of their game plan.

Explaining the blank week and the four 30-minute quarters the Crawley game was played over, Mousinho told The News: 'It was all really by design.

‘We wanted to not have a midweek game this week so we could get a full week's worth of training and then just add the extra 30 minutes on because otherwise players would be slightly short of minutes heading into the AFC Wimbledon and Bristol City games.

'It sets us up quite nicely. We've always spoken about having that free week to actually get a lot done on the training pitch. We managed to do it and it was a tough week for the lads and thankfully they look a lot sharper than when they did this time last week.

‘The non-league games were good exercises but now we need to start sharpening up a bit and that was a good start.’

Reflecting on the manner of their win against Crawley, Mousinho added: 'It was a really good exercise for us, in terms of getting minutes into the lads.

'We played 120 minutes, which was very deliberate.

'What we wanted to do with the lads returning was to put two strong XIs out, which we managed to do.

‘So most of the boys played 60 minutes, a couple played 75 and a couple played 45 as well as we managed them coming back in.

'I was really pleased with that from a fitness perspective first of all.

'And it was really good to see bits that we had been working on in training coming to fruition during the game as well.

'And to ultimately score nine goals, we're really pleased with that as well.’

Pompey are back in pre-season action on Tuesday when they travel to AFC Wimbledon. They then welcome Bristol City to Fratton Park on Saturday.