Portsmouth boss pledges to field strong teams for double-header against Gosport and the Hawks

And Marlon Pack, Joe Morrell and Anthony Scully are expected to be among those lining up at Gosport tonight (7pm kick-off).

John Mousinho’s men travel to Privett Park this evening, followed by an encounter with the Hawks at Westleigh Park tomorrow (1pm kick-off).

Having so far fielded alternative teams in each half against Europa FC and the Rocks, the Blues will now increase minutes for members of their first-team.

According to Mousinho, that will involve naming two different starting XIs against Gosport and the Hawks, with players in the line-ups handed 60-minute outings.

They will then call upon mainly Academy youngsters from the bench for the final 30 minutes, including the likes of Sam Folarin and Koby Mottoh, who both featured in Tuesday night’s 1-1 draw at Bognor.

The outcome will be all available members of their 26-man squad featuring over the next two days.

Mousinho told The News: ‘We’ll probably look to have two different sides starting both games, having one side playing 60 minutes on Friday and another 60 minutes on Saturday.

‘Then, probably for the last 30 minutes, have a bit of involvement from the youth team. We’ll need to top up numbers.

‘We don’t want players playing a significant amount in games back-to-back. It’s about going into one of the matches knowing they’ve got a full 60 minutes so they can put everything into it and step up from there.

‘For the second game at Havant, the artificial playing surface isn’t too much of a problem, but there are certain players who probably aren’t particularly suited to it.

‘Towards the back end of my career, I didn’t enjoy playing on Astroturf. I actually didn’t enjoy playing it earlier in my career either!

‘We just have to be wary of that, it produces a very different response on the body with your knees, ankles and your hips. We want to be careful with how we approach that as well.’

Last season under Danny Cowley, the Blues also faced the Hawks and Gosport on consecutive days.

They won 3-0 at Westleigh Park through Ryan Tunnicliffe, Liam Vincent and a Josh Passley own goal in front of a 3,000 crowd.

The following day, Gosport claimed a 1-0 victory, with Andreas Robinson netting a first-half winner at Privett Park.

Mousinho added: ‘At Bognor, we were looking at fitness and then we wanted to see how we shaped up in terms of possession and getting a good feel for the ball.

‘There are things we need to do a lot better, but that was only the second game into pre-season.

‘We need to move the ball a lot quicker, at times we took too many touches and got dispossessed, particularly in the first half. We definitely need to move the ball with a bit more speed.

‘In general play we are working a lot on what we want to do and want to achieve.’