Dan Godfrey

Sun 2 March 2025 13:29, UK

John Mousinho has done at Portsmouth what many before him had not managed to do, as a novice head coach by anyone’s estimations.

In his first full season in the managerial game, Mousinho returned a Portsmouth side to the Championship who had been through the doldrums for many years.

Pompey are now seeking to establish themselves in the second tier before eventually going on and competing towards the top six – that is at least the plan on paper.

Mousinho receives acclaim from former manager

Mousinho has garnered plenty of rightful praise since taking on the Portsmouth job, a move which was certainly a gamble when Pompey plucked him from the playing squad at Oxford United for his first senior coaching role in the middle of the 2022-23 campaign.

Former Preston, Peterborough and Stevenage manager Graham Westley – whom Mousinho played under at the latter – has been very complimentary about the Blues boss over the weekend, praising the way he “sticks to his guns”.

Westley, speaking in Sunday’s Football League Paper (2 March), rates the job Mousinho is doing at Fratton Park, which in the meantime as seen many fans eat their words after initial scepticism at his appointment back in January 2023.

“Take that challenge on. Just like John Mousinho seems to have done at Portsmouth as he slowly but surely sticks to his guns and impressively continues to climb up the Championship,” he said.

“The best are the best for many reasons. But when they weren’t the best, they were ambitious underdogs who trusted in themselves and their potential. And who seized the opportunity in their potential.”

Roaring to the League One title last term, Mousinho’s Pompey side accumulated 97 points in all, losing just five matches all season.

Portsmouth must ensure survival after all the hard work

Portsmouth look in a far better position than they did for much of the season before Christmas, and a lot of that is down to how Mousinho has navigated the issues associated with the level he has taken them to.

There have been no more injuries anywhere else in the Championship this season than at Portsmouth and Fratton Park, and that’s before the dwarf budget compared to parachute-paid rivals comes into the equation.

But Pompey are doing their bit, improving their form since the turn of the year, and must now recover from their first defeat in almost a month on Saturday (1 March) at Luton Town.

The Blues are still 17th in the table – a position everyone associated with the club would take – with 11 games to play, eight points clear of the weekend’s opponents in the first of the three relegation spots.

The hard work would all have been unravelled had Pompey gone down this season and while they are not out of the woods yet, Mousinho’s men are doing enough to secure this year’s aim.