Portsmouth handed much-needed double injury boost

Mark O’Mahony and Kusini Yengi are closing in on first-team returns to bolster John Mousinho’s centre-forward options in the battle to remain in the Championship.

Encouragingly, Brighton loanee O’Mahony was this week back in full training following a side strain which had sidelined him for the last two months.

While Yengi has now progressed to working on the grass as he recovers from knee ligament damage sustained while on international duty with Australia in November.

The 26-year-old is pencilled in for a potential comeback to full training in three weeks, having been restricted to just eight appearances in an injury-ravaged campaign.

And Mousinho is heartened that both will soon be challenging Colby Bishop for a first-team spot.

Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘Mark is now training with us fully, but isn’t quite ready to get back into the squad.

‘He picked up that injury at Swansea, which was a long, long time ago, and now he’s raring to go.

‘Everything I have seen of Mark tells me that all he has been doing in the medical room and then out on the pitch doing this rehab will be top-drawer because he’s been at it since the moment he came in.

‘He should be close to full fitness pretty soon, then needs to train for a couple of weeks before he can really look to get back into the side.

‘Kas was back out on the grass last week. We still think he’s probably three weeks away from returning to training because of the severity of the knee ligament injury. He was in a knee brace for six weeks.

‘Once Kas is back, I reckon two weeks worth of full training. Everything has been smooth with Kas in terms of where he is. We had to wait a long time to get him out of the knee brace, so you can’t do anything on your feet at that point, but that gives the ligament a bit of a chance to heal.

‘However, he has come back in really good shape.’

Yengi has endured an injury-ravaged season and, frustratingly, hasn’t been able to maintain the momentum generated from what was an excellent first Fratton Park campaign.

He missed the start of the Championship with a groin problem collected in training then, after returning, aggravated it while warming up before kick-off against West Brom in September.

The Australian came back at QPR in mid-October to make six consecutive appearances, including three starts in a row against Hull, Plymouth and Preston.

However, the following month he returned from international duty against Bahrain with posterior cruciate ligament damage having scored twice in a 2-2 World Cup qualifier.

Mousinho added: ‘At the time it was a really frustrating injury, especially when we have so many injuries internally that we look at and scratch our heads to find the answer to.

‘Instead he went out and got injured playing for Australia, which was really unlucky. At that point he had started three successive games for us and we had seen an improvement across them.

‘There are certain aspects of Kas’ game we want to see more of and we want to make sure he’s the threat he can be, particularly physically, because he’s such a good physical specimen.

‘We know Kas has a lot of ability, so it’s knitting all of those things together, being a real handful, making sure he runs in behind and puts the ball into the back of the net.

‘His most recent game for us (Preston) was his best performance in the Championship, I was really excited about what we were going to get for the rest of the season. Then, unfortunately, he picked up the injury.’