Portsmouth boss hits back at fatigue questions over star man’s season-ending injury
John Mousinho is adamant Pompey did all they could to prevent Callum Lang’s season-ending injury.
And the Blues boss had dismissed questions of fatigue, as the Scouser became the latest in a long line of fitness setbacks to impact his side’s season.
Mousinho has been rocked by the news the campaign is over, for the man who’s arguably been his side’s standout performer in the Championship this term.
The extent of Lang’s hamstring issue picked up at Oxford last weekend is worse than initially feared, with a scan likely ruling the attacking talent out for the final 13 games of the campaign. He joins Conor Shaughnessy and Jordan Williams in the treatment room with similar issues, with Regan Poole just back after an injury in the same area.
Mousinho is confident every consideration was made when it came to guarding against such an injury occurring, however, with there no suggestion Lang was as threat of a setback.
‘Do I regret starting him? Absolutely not, I would have started him every single day of the week - we were going into one our biggest games of the season.
‘There was absolutely nothing which told us he was struggling physically.
‘We subbed him off against Cardiff to give him a bit of rest and protection. We had a free week in the build-up to Sheffield United game and we did everything right in terms of travel and preparation. Callum has been just brilliant in terms of his output all season.
‘That’s that way I look at it. If I’d left Callum out there would’ve been a lot of eyebrows raised, including my own, thinking what on earth are you doing?
‘That’s without any red flags, there was nothing to suggest this guy is really struggling and we need to bring him out. In fact, when we made the (Oxford) substitutes we checked if Callum was alright. We spoke to him after the game and he said “if you’d subbed me at that point I would’ve been raging, because I felt fine”.
‘It’s just one of those things and there’s not a huge amount you can do.
There are a lot of clubs picking up injuries and a lot of players picking up injuries at this point. There’s the amount of games played in January, the surfaces and the stop-start nature of the game. They all come into it.’
One significant factor when it comes to Lang’s injury blow is the 30-minute stoppage to the Oxford game, following an medical emergency.
That led to players having to go through a second warm-up before the action recommenced and then having a 15-minute break at the interval.’
‘Not ideal’
Oxford’s Greg Leigh had already been forced off before half-time with a similar issue Lang’s, with Mousinho acknowledging the stop-start nature of the match potentially impacting the Pompey man.
He added: ‘You have to get the right balance, you don’t want to take them in when you don’t need to take them in.
‘There was a bite point where we thought we need to take the players in and we’ll get them warmed up again. It’s not ideal but they had done one warm-up, they had to do it again and then come in at half-time.
‘I think for Greg Leigh that affected him when he got injured in the first half with a very similar injury to the one Callum picked up around the 60-minute mark.’