Portsmouth boss addresses ex-Newcastle man's form after 'stop-start' introduction to Fratton Park

Recalled to the Blues’ side at Cardiff on Tuesday night, the striker lasted just 45 minutes before being withdrawn at half-time following an anonymous display in which he barely registered an impact.

Certainly the 25-year-old wasn’t alone in delivering an underwhelming performance in the 2-0 defeat which signalled Pompey’s slump to the bottom of the Championship.

Yet with one goal in nine appearances, including just four starts, Mousinho believes it reflects an up and down beginning to his fledgling Fratton Park career.

The Blues head coach told The News: ‘It was a difficult one for Eli at Cardiff. He started as a centre-forward and then - very, very early on - I had to drop him in and change positions as a 10.

‘To be honest, I don’t think any of the players, apart from maybe the substitutes, covered themselves in any glory, so I’m sure none are particularly pleased with their own performances.

‘We’ve seen some real glimpses of what Eli is capable of and he took his goal really well at Leeds. Since then it has been a bit stop-start for him, although we’ve seen some really promising things from Eli.

‘It’s about building into that and trying to make that a bit more consistent, working on his game to get him into a place where he can challenge every week for a starting spot.

‘He’s always a willing runner, wanting to work hard for the team, while probably his best performance for us was against Oxford, without scoring a goal, although he did miss a penalty.

‘His physicality (against Oxford) with back to goal and link-up was good, it’s just that final third putting everything together in the box and a couple of chances where he could have got a shot off or got away from a player.

‘Those are the bits where, if we put all of that together, I think he’ll look like a really good centre-forward.’

Sorensen and Paddy Lane were the only changes to the side which won at QPR - Pompey’s sole win of the season to date.

They replaced Mark O’Mahony and Christian Saydee, who were instead named on the bench at Cardiff - and Mousinho explained his reasoning for recalling Sorensen.

He added: ‘We had such a huge output at the weekend against QPR, particularly the effort levels of the front three.

‘Mark looked tired and was tired when I spoke to him on Sunday. He didn’t have a huge amount of involvement with the Republic of Ireland 21s, then played a Championship game straightway - and he felt it.

‘With Christian, we’re always on at him about how effective he is and whether he can do that for 90 minutes and in back-to-back games.

‘At the moment, we don’t think he’s in a position to do that, so we wanted to freshen it up by bringing in two players who have shown they can run.’