Portsmouth target friendly fixture as Regan Poole steps up long-awaited comeback

According to the head coach, the popular central defender won’t be back in first-team contention until October as he maintains encouraging progress from ACL damage.

The next stage of Poole’s injury recovery is earmarked for an outing in a behind-closed-doors fixture, although a date and opposition has still to be fixed.

Certainly a prospective outing for the Manchester United man would be designed as a gentle reintroduction rather than thrown in for a full appearance.

And Mousinho is keen to arrange an opportunity when Poole can be assessed in a match situation following 10 months on the sidelines.

He told The News: ‘I’d say it could be October before Regan is involved in first-team matches.

‘However, we want to get minutes into him, just to indicate how far he is, and will probably try to get him a game, maybe during this England international break.

‘More importantly, it’s training time. Regan has been in and out of training for the past 2-3 weeks and we think maybe he’s still 4-6 weeks away from being involved.

‘We don't have any cup games until January to use, but we have the ability to arrange friendly games, along with the Hampshire Senior Cup.

‘It’s just getting the right balance between making sure we don’t risk him unnecessarily, but also pushing him back at the right rate.

‘There are potential games we can arrange. We haven't done it huge amounts, we didn’t do it at all last season, yet when I first came in we played AFC Wimbledon here in a friendly.

‘We’ll probably try to organise something in the September international break or the week after that. It could be half an hour for Regan, we just want to see what he looks like.’

Certainly the absence of the Bristol Street Motors Trophy from Pompey’s fixture list these days is not all good news.

In the past the competition was used productivity to hand youngsters first-team experience, host players returning from injury and providing match minutes for fringe members.

And Mousinho admits such fixtures could have benefitted Poole.

He added: ‘As nice as it has been not to have those extra games, the Bristol Street Motors Trophy last year was really useful for us.

‘In the first couple of weeks of last season, we were able to make 11 changes for the Carabao Cup games and trophy games. Then those matches became a problem when we couldn't make those changes.

‘For the AFC Wimbledon game, we didn’t have the luxury of actually making all those changes and had to play a couple of first-team players. It didn’t work out particularly well for us and became a burden.’