'More than that': Portsmouth boss addresses how many players he needs to sign this summer

Yet the head coach is unable to put a figure on how many players must be recruited ahead of the 2025-26 campaign.

The Blues are presently finalising their retained list, with seven out-of-contract players waiting to learn whether they have Fratton futures.

Meanwhile, all six loan players have returned to their parent clubs - Freddie Potts, Rob Atkinson, Mark O’Mahony, Isaac Hayden, Kaide Gordon and Adil Aouchiche.

Having retained Championship status, squad strengthening is inevitable, particularly with first-team regulars such as Potts, Atkinson and Hayden needing to be replaced.

In the summer of 2023, sporting director Rich Hughes oversaw the signing of 14 players and 11 departures. Last summer it was 15 recruited and 13 handed Pompey exits.

This time around, Mousinho isn’t anticipating such sizeable changes - although he’s not sure how many.

The Blues head coach told The News: ‘There won’t necessarily be 14 new players this summer. We will try to cut that down because we have more contracted players this year and obviously still have gaps in the squad to fill.

‘I certainly don’t think it’s going to be one or two, it will be more than that. What we need to do as a football club is stabilise year-on-year. So, for example - and please don’t hold me to this - if we do eight in the summer, that’s great. If there's more in January, fine.

‘Then summer next year, hopefully we can be a bit more stable, do four or five, and get into the realms where we are very, very happy with the squad.

‘At that point you want to keep the contracted players we want, maybe not relying so much on loans, and then it might be just 2-3 in every transfer window.

‘We are very, very far away from that at the moment and I think everyone understands that - and we understand that perfectly at the football club.

‘We’ve got the foundations now. Whether we are now a solid Championship team or not, we have scrapped and scraped to get where we are, so the players have earned it, definitely.

‘But there are a huge amount of improvements to make, that’s the most important thing. We still look back at the season and can’t get carried away with what we’ve achieved because of the many moments we’ve had where we simply weren’t good enough.’

Portsmouth signed 15 players last summer

Of the 14 arrivals in the summer of 2023, only Conor Shaughnessy, Christian Saydee, Terry Devlin and Regan Poole are contracted for next season, with Kusini Yengi waiting to learn his fate.

Last summer totalled 15 new arrivals, with those contracted for next season being Jordan Williams, Josh Murphy, Reuben Swann, Jordan Archer, Andre Dozzell, Matt Ritchie, Abdoulaye Kamara, Harvey Blair, Nicolas Schmid and Ibane Bowat.

Mousinho added: ‘There is now a base, particularly the players that have now played Championship football, having not played it before.

‘Colby, Connor Ogilvie, Regan Poole, all of a sudden we are now looking a year down the line with a bit more experience for those sorts of players.

‘So I’m going for someone in between 1-13 players needed! I genuinely don’t know at the moment!’

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