Portsmouth boss philosophical over luckless Chelsea starlet's latest injury set-back in another career blow

Over the years, the Chelsea youngster’s encouraging development has been hampered by a succession of injury and illness issues.

As a consequence, Pompey have carefully handled the 21-year-old with kid gloves since his loan arrival at the end of the transfer window, easing him into first-team action.

It has been a patient approach rewarded with two goals in eight appearances from Anjorin, albeit not featuring in any match for more than 62 minutes.

However, the former England youth international damaged his hamstring while closing down a Chesterfield player in Sunday’s 1-0 FA Cup defeat, signalling a withdrawal after 44 minutes.

Mousinho is now waiting to learn the full extent of the problem, but remains philosophical after yet another injury for the youngster.

He told The News: ‘It’s one of those things with Tino, there’s nothing you can do about that.

‘There was eight days post that Reading game and, having done everything we normally do during the week, it's one of those things, yet obviously disappointing.

‘We’ll see how that goes, it doesn’t look great.

‘Tino has played pretty well, he scored at Reading, things were coming along nicely. It’s one of those things, injuries are part of the game and we’ve got to deal with them.

‘We’re going to have to dust ourselves off and go again on Tuesday at Leyton Orient and we’ve got another game on Saturday. We have a squad for a reason and it’s going to be tested now.’

Anjorin has totalled 257 minutes in League One for Pompey so far, while has not featured for more than a first half in the FA Cup and EFL Trophy.

He netted in last month’s 5-1 victory over Gillingham in the competition which has now been rebranded the Bristol Street Motors Trophy, while a sublime volley at Reading started the comeback which saw the Blues win 3-2.

Meanwhile, Mousinho has allayed injury fears over Joe Rafferty, who was withdrawn at half-time against Chesterfield.

And he insists Regan Poole and Anjorin were the only players to have collected knocks in the FA Cup upset.

He added: ‘All’s fine with Joe, he came off because we picked up a booking and we only had one substitution slot left.

‘We didn’t want him to put in a tackle and be on a last warning in the second half, so we’d then need to bring him off and couldn’t use any other substitutes.

‘Aside from the first half, all the other substitutions were tactical, nothing to do with injuries.’