‘Hasn’t been disastrous’: Why boss believes Manchester City starlet’s loss won’t kill Portsmouth

John Mousinho revealed Pompey were prepared for the January loss of Alex Robertson.

The Blues boss has outlined how the club’s football operation put a contingency plan in place to deal with losing the Manchester City starlet’s massive impact on his team.

And having that back-up plan in place is what fills the head coach with confidence his side are well placed to handle the setback of Robertson’s season-ending injury.

Pompey’s Christmas wobble and losing Robertson has raised the ghost of previous League One campaigns in which they failed after topping the table on December 25.

There are clear parallels with the 2018-19 campaign when Kenny Jackett’s side failed to deal with the loss of Ben Thompson, following his Millwall recall.

Poor recruitment neither replaced Thompson’s influence or bolstered the squad, as they faded and lost Sunderland in the play-offs.

Now though, Mousinho feels Pompey are well placed to handle the Robertson blow due to recruitment planning.

He said:‘The example (of being prepared in the window) is Alex Robertson, who is a player we will now try to have to replace.

‘Going into the window we didn’t think we would, but our concern with Robbo was he could be recalled rather than anything else.

‘That’s why it hasn’t been hugely disastrous for us, because we have names under that who we’d like to bring to the football club.

‘We’re positive that we’re making progress with those, we just have to be patient and wait and see what happens now.’.

Watching what unfolds in terms of involvement of potential signings at existing clubs, is something Pompey fans are monitoring this month - with Ipswich’s George Edmundson and Brentford’s Myles Peart-Harris.

Mousinho that’s no different to what is happening within the Blues camp.

He added: ‘We constantly monitor everything.We monitor everything anyway and one of the things we look at once we’ve got our teamsheet in the weekend, we will look at the teamsheets for all four leagues. It’s a natural thing to do. We’re always looking at that at all times.’