Portsmouth boss on why ex-Bristol City man needed to be substituted at half-time against Port Vale

The 20-year-old was withdrawn at the interval on Saturday following a difficult opening 45 minutes against Ellis Harrison and Matty Taylor.

With the Blues trailing 2-0 and booed off, Pompey’s head coach instead introduced Clark Robertson into the left-sided centre-half role.

The Blues went on to claim a 2-2 draw with two goals in three minutes, courtesy of Colby Bishop’s penalty and Michael Jacobs’ strike.

And afterwards, Mousinho had words of encouragement for Towler.

He told The News: ‘Ryley will not be defined by that 45 minutes, I actually think it will make him a much better player because he’s going to come up against these difficult challenges.

‘Clark was excellent in the second half and it was a tough one for Ryley, who has been brilliant for 15 games since I’ve been in.

‘We just thought it was one where a bit more experience would help us on the pitch and, given what we have with Clark, getting him on was good – and he played, really, really well.

‘I have been there in the Football League plenty of times when you have two really, really good centre-forwards and Harrison and Taylor have been around for a long time and scored a lot of goals.

‘I think probably the Pompey faithful have seen the best of Ellis over a number of years, so you know what he can do.

‘What we wanted to do with Clark was just bring someone on who has dealt with that a couple of hundred times in his career and, in fairness to Ryley, he’s not played a huge amount of games and not necessarily dealt with those situations.

‘That’s fine, it’s a really good learning experience, and I thought Clark came on and dealt with that, he showed a lot of composure in the second half and, ultimately, his part in it led to us getting back in the game.

‘Ryley has been so good for us, but sometimes you just have these moments. It’s one of those, you deal with it.’

Towler has been an ever-present for Mousinho’s 15 matches in charge, while has 16 appearances overall since his January arrival.

Unquestionably, he has enjoyed an impressive start to life at Fratton Park.

Mousinho added: ‘I spoke with Ryley at half-time and after the game, there’s no problem whatsoever.

‘What next for Ryley is he will be back in training this week – and I’m still really, really pleased with what he has done for Pompey so far.’