New Portsmouth head coach John Mousinho reveals his input into Matt Macey's transfer from Luton

The on-loan Luton stopper’s signing for the remainder of the season was officially announced on the same day as the new head coach’s appointment.

However, Mousinho has revealed he was fully consulted on the process to find a replacement for Josh Griffiths, who returned to parent club West Brom last week.

And he said his recommendation to go with Macey – whose contribution on debut was vital to the Blues’ 2-0 win over Exeter on Saturday – was something that aligned with sporting director’s Rich Hughes’ thoughts on the matter after a short-list of possibilities was drawn up.

Explaining the deal and his input, Mousinho told The News: ‘Obviously with Josh going there were some options on the table and Matt was our number-one choice.

‘That was all run by me when we (Pompey) got permission to speak to Oxford.

‘Then we started to run by something that was live in terms of timing and we needed to get something sorted quickly.

‘We would obviously like a lot more time to discuss these things but throughout the process I signalled, I suppose, what sort of profile of goalkeeper and all other players we might preference, and obviously that matched up with the recruitment team and the sporting director's expectations.

‘So it wasn't a particularly difficult situation at that point.

‘Matt was a goalkeeper that I really liked and had watched previously and so it was a fairly easy decision.’

Former Arsenal trainee Macey pulled off two superb first-half saves to prevent the Grecians racing into an early 2-0 lead at Fratton Park.

The giant stopper then stood up to the challenge of a one-on-one situation with Jevani Brown early in the second half which provided the platform for Pompey to go on and win the game and ensuring the Blues kept their first clean sheet of 2023.

Mousinho added: ‘It was probably an ideal debut, obviously from the standpoint of the clean sheet. It was excellent for him to come in and get that.

‘He settled really well into the game and made a brilliant save in the first five minutes. That helped, before he made another really good save in the first half.

‘They were probably the only two bits of work he really had in the first half, but he was alert, he was on his toes, he was ready to come and sniff out the danger when Brown was breaking at the beginning of the second half.

‘That was really important because going 1-0 down at that stage changes the game.

‘But that’s why we brought Matt in. We know he’s good, we know what he’s capable of and hopefully the lads will take a huge amount of confidence knowing what they’ve got behind them in Matt.’