John Mousinho explains surprise Portsmouth absence - and sets challenge for ex-West Ham man

The former West Ham winger missed friendlies against the Hawks and Bognor over the weekend after being laid low by a stomach bug.

Various members of the Blues squad have been impacted by the illness over the last week, with Scully the latest casualty.

After putting last season’s frustrating injury problems behind him, the 25-year-old had previously been involved in every training session, while featured for 45 minutes at Gosport last week.

Now Mousinho is looking for the attacker to make an impact in the remaining friendlies.

Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘Anthony was ill. He called Steve (Hard) about 3.30am in the morning.

‘There’s a bit of illness going through, Sammy (Silvera) missed a couple of days worth of training, Conor Shaughnessy missed Friday, not because of illness but family illness. There's a stomach bug going around.

‘We would have had Anthony involved and given him minutes over these two games, but unfortunately he was ill. He has trained every day this pre-season, this is the first time he has missed everything.

‘We’ve had so little time on the pitch (so far in pre-season) and, with Anthony, that’s really where we need to see the progression from what he shows in training.

‘Last summer was a very, very strong pre-season from Anthony, I thought he played well when he had that behind-closed-doors friendly against Crawley and then unfortunately probably didn’t hit the ground running in terms of games in the league and cup.

‘That’s really where the acid test is for Anthony, getting him game time is going to be a priority for him and we’ll see where we go from there.’

With Josh Murphy and Sammy Silvera joining Paddy Lane and Gavin Whyte in competing for the wing spots, Scully has plenty of competition for a Championship place.

And Mousinho will continue to assess his progress in pre-season.

He added: ‘We need to get Anthony over the injury problems he had last season. Every time he came back, we just couldn't get him going again, with various injuries after.

‘The plan at the moment is he challenges for a first-team spot. It’s important for him to get minutes and we’ll make a judgement off the back of what he produces when he actually plays some games.’