The unprecedented scenes Portsmouth boss witnessed as players prepare for Derby County return

And the Blues boss felt that made the international break a good thing for his players, despite halting the momentum they were building.

Mousinho’s men return to action with a testing trip to Derby this weekend, after their trip to Barnsley was called off with three players receiving calls from their countries.

It meant no immediate chance to build on the impressive win against Peterborough last time out, and extend the record 17-game unbeaten run in the league across this and last season.

But after experiencing a punishing run of nine games across 30 days at the start of the campaign, the Pompey boss was pleased to give his players some time off.

Mousinho stated he’d never known a run of games at that rate at the start of the season, in his time in football.

Speaking to What the EFL?! Podcast, Mousinho said: ‘We never used to have this many games in League One called off, but there’s a few more international call-ups.

‘It’s been an interesting one for us. In some ways we didn’t want the (Barnsley) game called off, in the fact we beat Peterborough.

‘But we’d also had nine games in the first 30 days in the season.

‘It’s been the busiest August I’ve experienced as a player or a coach, so the break came at a good time for us.

‘We were in need of a bit of time off - a bit of time not to be preparing for games.

‘We gave the lads four days off and then we were back in over the weekend.

‘We were back in Thursday, Friday and Saturday, had Sunday off and were back in Monday on a normal schedule.

‘So it worked out relatively well for us, just because of the volume of games we had.’

After some time off, Mousinho explained he felt it was a benefit to get off the treadmill of going from game to game for his players.

It meant the head coach could spend some time getting stuck into the detail of how he wants Pompey to play, rather than looking to the next match.

Mousinho added: ‘We got through in the first round of the League Cup which added an extra game in August.

‘It’s also been nice because of the Saturday-Tuesday games to get some training in this week.

‘That’s one thing we’ve not been able to do, every training session has felt like a matchday minus one.

‘So it has been nice to get the lads in without the pressure of game and be, I suppose, normally.’