Why are Portsmouth getting so many injuries? - John Mousinho's in-depth analysis of treatment table woes
The Blues now have 10 players injured, with Conor Shaughnessy the latest casualty
John Mousinho surveyed the worst injury crisis of his Pompey tenure and insisted: We’re never going to prevent all of them.
The head coach is adamant the Blues are exploring every avenue in an attempt to reduce escalating numbers in the treatment room, with 10 out of action at present, the latest being Conor Shaughnessy.
In an in-depth interview with The News on Pompey’s ongoing injury headache, Mousinho highlights how other clubs are experiencing similar issues, including Wednesday night’s opposition Watford.
He also reflects on his training methods, the quality of the Copnor Road training pitches, Pompey’s medical department and whether a dome could be the solution.
Yet every question produces up with the same answer: the Blues are doing all they can to prevent the ever-lengthening injury list.
He told The News: ‘We are never going to be able to prevent all the injuries we pick up. There are some we just have to put aside and move on with, like Hayden Matthews picking up a contact injury, there’s nothing we can do about that.
‘Josh Knight has picked up a stress fracture in his back, that is one of those medically you just have to hold your hands up and move on.
‘I guess the ones that feel like they are preventable, with the likes of Shocks and the soft-tissue injuries, we do everything we possibly can in terms of training, in terms of injury-prevention in the gym, in terms of getting the right people in to help out. It’s just one of those things you have to deal with.
‘We’ve definitely got more injuries than we’ve been used to and more injuries than the rest of the league, but even on Wednesday night, Watford picked up four injuries playing in the game having had a fully-fit squad going into it.
‘They are probably sitting there licking their wounds because of the intensity of the game, the nature of tackles, the nature of the physical output.
‘Games are getting much, much longer, the demands of the game has gone up so much in the last five years and maybe it has taken its toll with the amount of games played.
‘Whenever you look at an individual injury, there are so many factors, you can break it down 100 different ways.
‘It could be a player has had a bad night’s sleep or sat awkwardly on a sofa or the bus, it could be something as simple as that, it could be something a bit more sinister.
‘We do our best to try to break all of that down and we do our best to try to prevent it, but, unfortunately, injuries are part of that.’
Pompey aren’t alone with injury problems
Mousinho: ‘The club have looked into it, but every single club will have the same problem at some point. Look up and down the Championship, other clubs have had some of the issues we’ve looked at over the past few weeks.
‘Sheffield Wednesday are in the middle of an injury crisis, Bristol City were earlier in the season, Watford are now probably a couple away from really thinking they are in it.
‘If you look at the back end of Wednesday’s game, I know they were short of centre-halves anyway with Max Alleyne going back to Manchester City, Hector Kyprianou then moved back. They’ll be thinking “We’ve had no luck here because we keep picking up injuries to centre-backs”.
‘When we played Millwall, they were in the midst of a real injury crisis at the time. Arsenal had it as well, I was reading some of the comments that Mikel Arteta was making 2-3 weeks before Christmas.
‘He was getting a lot of stick from the press about Arsenal’s injury crisis and one of his takes was we don’t train, we have a game every 3-4 days in the FA Cup, Carabao Cup, Champions League and Premier League.
‘All of a sudden, they flip, coming to us and having that fully-fit squad - and are now in a position to loan players out.
‘It happens across the board. We need to do our best to get those boys back and be stronger - and, in the meantime, do everything we can to try to prevent those injuries.’
Training intensity
Mousinho: ‘When you are in the club, it feels like injuries are always us, but I do think it’s something which just happens and it isn’t something we’re ever going to be able to solve, particularly with the way we want to play and the way I want to train.
‘I will take that on board, we want to train with a lot of intensity, there’s no way you can have the output we want on a match-day without training with intensity and training with aggression.
‘Ultimately, at times like this, we haven’t properly trained in about six weeks. We just haven’t trained because of the amount of games we’ve had, so it can't necessarily be that, there are other factors.
‘We picked up injuries over Christmas, where we would come in here for a bit, do a walk through and do a lot of recovery - but that was about it.’
Copnor Road training pitches
Mousinho: ‘We spent a lot of money on them in the summer, they are absolutely fine, they’re in good condition. We haven't picked up a huge amount of injuries in training either, a lot of the injuries we pick up are on a match-day.
‘The training pitches have improved a fair bit since I’ve been there. Last summer we did a full renovation of the pitches and completely redid the goalkeeping area, they have improved a lot.
‘Ultimately, when we have that south-cast weather, with the amount of rain and wind, it’s sometimes tough as you go through the winter months, but the pitches are holding up pretty well.
‘They’ve held up well now over the past couple of seasons. There’s always room for improvement and we want to try to push that as a football club. The more pitches we add to the training ground the better - and that’s something we’re trying to address, it’s something we’ll keep pushing.
‘But we have that limited space here at the minute. Internally, we want to have everything done yesterday, but we have to be realistic about where we are as a club, particularly considering we didn’t have a training ground before the Trust came in.
‘We are getting there, we’re always trying to improve - and I think we’ll get there.’
Pompey’s medical department
Mousinho: ‘We have completely changed the medical department. We’ve now got three full-time physios and we didn’t have that when I first came in. We’ve now improved the performance department, with George (Bell) and Max (Whittingham) coming in.
‘We have a lot of people who come in on a part-time basis on a day rate to really help with everything injury-wise, we are pushing the boundaries there all the time.
‘We have added hugely to the staff cots over the past two years to make sure we get ourselves up to Championship level.
‘There are still bits we can improve upon, still bits we can do, but we don’t want to go over the top too early, we’ve got to get the right balance. I think we do a good job there.’
Building a dome
Mousinho: ‘It might help with injuries. If we had a dome, we’d use it when the pitches were frozen or have a little too much rain and we’re slightly flooded.
‘I wouldn’t train the lads extensively on Astrotruf, we have full use of Moneyfields (the John Jenkins Stadium) if we need to - and I don’t use it because I think it’s more of an injury risk than training on grass.’