Portsmouth boss’ frank admission on what comes next at window’s close following summer overhaul

The Blues boss saluted his club’s football operation for the diligence of their work in overhauling his squad, with Tino Anjorin the last of 14 new faces to arrive on the eve of the window’s close.

Pompey set a frenetic early recruitment pace after Will Norris became the first signing in the middle of June.

Mousinho feels the squad planning from the start of the year paid off on that front, but now the onus is on him to make some promising options sing.

He said: ‘It has been busy.

‘A lot of the work we managed to do, especially at the start of the transfer window when we made a few of those signings in June and they were all revealed, that was the result of the work which had been put in over the previous four or five months.

‘For us the transfer window started on February 1, when we sorted everything out in terms of the last incomings of January and we knew where the squad would be in the summer.

‘We pretty much had a good scope on what the outgoings were going to be.

‘It was looking like a relatively blank canvas at that point to bring in 12, 13 or 14 players.

‘It’s been busy and we thought we could have a breather three weeks ago, but we weren’t able to - and that’s fine.

‘It’s been enjoyable and once the window closes it’s now time for us to try to knit everything together in terms of new signings - get some of them up to speed and really push on in the league.’

With the summer window now at a close, Mousinho made no secret of the fact recruitment plans will now be quickly thrown forward to the winter window - and beyond.

He added: ‘The beauty and the curse of football is nothing ever stops.

‘There’s that full fixture list for everyone in our recruitment and scouting team to go to up and down the country.

‘So we go again. We know there may be work to do in January and, in my relatively short experience here, the sooner you get your work done the better you are prepared to move on things.

‘I know they (the recruitment team) aren’t going to be resting on their laurels.

‘I know for a fact in this window even though i’ve not been hugely involved in all of it this window, there’s future planning and come next week we’ll start looking at who the targets are for January and next summer.

‘The more work we do on that the better. We do a lot of due diligence on all of the players to have every box ticked.’