Upbeat Portsmouth boss allays serious injury fears after 'freak incident' sidelines top scorer

The Blues had braced themselves to lose their top scorer for up to 16 weeks after sustaining a suspected fractured ankle in training on Thursday.

However, subsequent scans have revealed the injury is purely ankle ligament damage.

That would rule him out for between 6-8 weeks, according to Mousinho.

Nonetheless Pompey’s head coach is relieved the diagnosis is nowhere near as bleak as initially anticipated.

He told The News: ‘Unfortunately Kas picked up an injury in training on Thursday, he fell awkwardly and a player landed on top of him.

‘We initially thought there was a fracture, so we protected him with a boot and he limped off for an X-ray and an MRI scan on Thursday afternoon.

‘We got the results back on Friday, which were much better than we thought and it’s 6-8 weeks with ankle ligament damage.

‘If it was a fracture we could have been looking at 14-16 weeks out and that is what we were trying to project against, it could have been much worse.

‘It’s still a real blow to everything we have been trying to build over the last few weeks, but the main message is we are not too displeased because it could have been a lot worse.

‘It’s a freak incident, one of those things. I know there are a couple of rumours circulating that it was something to do with the training pitch and the rain. All nonsense, it was on Thursday.

‘The press will attest to that because they were there. Thankfully they did us a favour by not releasing it or didn't give Cheltenham too many ideas about what we were going to do.’

Yengi joins Tom Lowery on the treatment table, who damaged his knee on the opening day of the season against Bristol Rovers.

However, Paddy Lane returned to action in the goalless draw with Cheltenham, coming off the bench late on.

The winger collected ankle ligament damage at AFC Wimbledon during pre-season.

Mousino added: ‘It’s one of those things with Kas, there’s nothing we can really do.

‘Kas came back quickly from his minor ankle injury in pre-season so we know he rehabs really well – and hopefully he’ll do that this time.’