Pathway revealed for Portsmouth defender after former Lincoln City and Man Utd man’s return from long-term injury

And the Pompey boss admitted he can’t put a timescale on the defender getting back to his best, after stepping back into first-team action against West Brom.

An undoubted highlight of Sunday’s 3-0 defeat to the Championship leaders was the former Lincoln man making his comeback, with 14 minutes remaining.

That’s after Poole suffered a serious anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury in the FA Cup at Chesterfield last November.

That curtailed the 26-year-old’s season, after a period in which he was arguably the outstanding player in Pompey’s flying start to the League One campaign.

Poole’s return is massive news with the Blues operating with a makeshift back line this term, but Mousinho is reticent to suggest when he’ll be operating at full throttle.

He said: ‘Regan’s only played 15 games for the football club, so to get that reception - I think everyone knows the quality he’s got and is going to bring this season.

‘Once we’ve got him back he’s really going to bolster our options at centre-back and with that patched-up back four.

‘I don’t know (how long it will take for him to get back to his best) is the honest answer.

‘When you come back from an ACL it can take a long time and he’s been out for a long time - but he’s also been training for a long time now, so we’ll see.

‘I don’t know how long it will take, but hopefully it’s very quick and we see him really back in business very soon.’

Poole has been back in training with his team-mates since the middle of August, as Pompey eased the Wales international back after so long on the sidelines.

That’s because of the complexity of his ACL surgery, which sees a piece of hamstring tendon replace the damaged ligament.

With there known to be a relatively high re-injury rate for such a procedure, Mousinho knows Poole can’t be thrown in deep after his first-team comeback.

He added: ‘It’s why we’ve been very cautious with him.

‘When you have the graft it’s essentially putting an artificial piece of ACL into your knee.

‘You have to make sure the graft sets in before you can do anything - and everything else around it can become a problem because of the loss of strength in the hamstring (where the graft is taken from).

‘The hamstring, the quad, the calf (can all be affected), so we have to make sure we’re cautious with him.’