Portsmouth's Championship Challenge: Managing Injuries and Squad Depth

The Championship is supposed to be a grind. Managers talk about the “relentless” schedule almost on autopilot.

Portsmouth can’t quite say the same. Not yet, anyway.

The odd postponement against Wolves has left Pompey with a strangely gentle opening. Just one midweek league outing so far, and now a three-week pause with only a small handful of players expected to disappear on international duty. It’s not the usual slog. It’s more like a deep breath before the real storm hits.

A big squad, but few 90-minute men

John Mousinho has already turned to 28 different players this season. That number screams depth. But scratch the surface and it tells another story.

Only three players have started every Championship game. Only seven have managed to complete 90 minutes more than once. For a side about to walk into a brutal run of fixtures, that’s a concern.

Some of that is by design. Mousinho has long embraced the five-substitute rule, and this squad offers more genuine options than Fratton Park has seen in years. He wants energy from the bench, fresh legs, different profiles. That part is deliberate.

The rest is necessity.

Fitness issues, knocks and longer-term problems have turned team selection into a weekly juggling act. New arrivals Marko Milovanovic, Jayden Meghoma and Tyrese Shade all came through the door short of full fitness. Shade and Milovanovic had barely trained properly because their moves were looming; Milovanovic has since picked up a minor injury as well.

Abu Kamara’s minutes were carefully rationed early on. Ryan Kavuma-McQueen is only 17 and is sensibly being managed, not least because he’s been playing with a broken hand. Talented, fearless, but still a teenager in a division that punishes overuse.

Wingers wiped out, leaders patched up

Then there’s the sheer bad luck out wide. Three wingers – Josh Murphy, Keshi Anderson and now Luke Brooke-Smith – have all gone down. One after another. Any manager would feel that.

Key figures through the spine have had their own issues. Marlon Pack missed the start of the campaign. Regan Poole has been battling a hamstring problem. Zak Swanson and Ebou Adams carried injuries from the end of last season right through the summer, dragging their recoveries into this new campaign.

Conor Shaughnessy is edging back towards his best and looked much more like himself last weekend. Even so, he sat out the only midweek game Portsmouth have had so far, and Mousinho has stopped short of saying the defender can reliably play twice a week. Given the injury-hit nature of Shaughnessy’s last two seasons, the caution is understandable.

No Championship side escapes injuries. This isn’t some unique crisis on the south coast. But there is a reasonable expectation that, by the end of September, most of those available should be capable of getting through a full game without the medical team holding its breath.

Right now, it still feels like Mousinho is spinning plates. The difference this year is that the plates are better quality.

The calm before a brutal run

That’s why this three-week break sits so awkwardly with the manager. On paper, it looks like a gift: time to reset, recover, condition. In reality, momentum can stall, rhythm can fade, and the real test waits on the other side.

The restart could hardly be more charged. The South Coast derby lights the fuse on a punishing stretch: five matches in 14 days, eight in 28. No easing back in. No gentle reintroduction. Just straight into a sequence packed with difficult fixtures and emotional weight.

Across that spell, Mousinho will need more than options. He’ll need players who can repeatedly go the distance. The luxury of hooking half the team on 60 minutes disappears when the calendar squeezes this tight and the opposition level jumps.

Spinning plates in September has been manageable. Spinning them through a derby and a relentless run of games, with points and momentum on the line, is something else entirely.

Soon enough, we’ll find out how many of those 28 players are truly ready for the Championship grind, and how many are just passing through the rotation.