'No surprise': Portsmouth boss' honest admission over Minhyeok Yang's Fratton impact after Coventry move
The winger was recalled by Spurs over concerns about Pompey game time
John Mousinho admits he wasn’t surprised by Minhyeok Yang’s sudden Pompey exit.
But he is convinced the South Korean international’s five-month Fratton Park stay still represented a ‘good spell’.
Spurs last week cancelled a scheduled season-long loan for Yang after becoming dissatisfied over his number of first-team starts.
With the Premier League club activating a recall option in the January window, he was subsequently loaned to Championship leaders Coventry for the remainder of the campaign.
Yang made 17 Pompey appearances, of which 11 were starts, while he scored three goals, including the memorable Charlton winner in what would prove to be his final south-coast outing.
And Mousinho has assessed the 19-year-old’s overall impact during his Fratton Park stint.
‘It’s something we were prepared for’
The Blues’ head coach told The News: ‘There was always a possibility of Minhyeok going back to Spurs and we heard about the possibility of it a couple of weeks ago. So it wasn’t a huge surprise and is something we were prepared for.
‘They just wanted more minutes, so that’s fine. We haven’t given him a huge amount of minutes recently and we live with that.
‘When you strip everything back, three goals, a number of starts, a number of appearances, I was pretty positive about the way things were going for Minhyeok.
‘There’s obviously an expectation for him from his own perspective to come in and play, but, as a young lad in a side which isn’t firing at the top of the league, I thought he had a really, really good impact. In that short time he had a good spell at Pompey.
‘You can talk about physicality, but I just think he was a different profile, still a young lad, not the biggest anyway, and brought different qualities to the side.
‘That Charlton game was a good indicator of the level and where maybe out of possession it was a difficult game for him, but he popped up with the winner because he’s got so much quality.’
The vast majority of Yang’s Pompey starts came on the left flank, primarily as a replacement for the injured Josh Murphy.
However, following the 4-0 humbling at Birmingham on November 1, he never started a game there again for the Blues, with Harvey Blair latter preferred.
‘His best performances were probably off the left’
Instead, he subsequently featured on the right wing in Mousinho’s starting XI on two occasions - against Swansea and Blackburn last month.
Yet Mousinho admits the Spurs youngster’s best displays for Pompey were when asked to operate on the left flank.
He added: ‘His best performances were probably off the left when we had a couple of games when Murph was out.
‘The Middlesbrough game when he scored, he scored against Watford, he had the contribution against Leicester as well away from home.
‘So he was better on the left-hand side.’
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