Portsmouth boss’ first-team assurance to ‘outstanding’ West Ham starlet Freddie Potts after injury blow
Portsmouth boss’ first-team assurance to ‘outstanding’ West Ham starlet Freddie Potts after injury blow
Absent Freddie Potts has been reassured he still ‘deserves’ to be on Pompey’s team-sheet.
That’s the message from John Mousinho, despite the Blues registering successive victories while the
highly-regarded West Ham midfielder has been sidelined by injury.
The 21-year-old collected a calf problem at Sheffield United earlier this month,
with Andre Dozzell and Isaac Hayden forming the central midfield partnership in the meantime.
Until collecting that injury, Potts had started 25 out of 27 Blues fixtures,
only failing to make the starting line-up when Mousinho opted to rest him.
When fit, he faces a battle to regain his spot following victories over Cardiff and Oxford United
but Pompey’s head coach hasn’t forgotten his previous excellent contributions.
Mousinho told The News: ‘Nobody is an automatic selection, but I certainly think that,
when Freddie’s available, he more than deserves to be on the team-sheet at the moment.
‘As long as he plays as well as he’s been playing, he will keep his place.
‘We’ve been playing him game after game after game.
January certainly was an absolutely nuts month in terms of the amount of matches we had.
If I ever thought there had been a significant dip with Freddie,
I would have brought him out of the side, and I didn’t.
‘The only two games I did bring him out were Bristol City and West Brom, just to protect him and rest him.
He was always going to come back in after that.
‘I have always thought he deserves to be selected in the side and, overall, he has been outstanding.
‘Testament to Freddie, when we looked at January,
he was one we were hoping to keep rather than looking to do anything else.
It was much more of a case of looking over our shoulder and making sure he wasn’t recalled.’
Potts joined Pompey on a season-long loan in late August,
following a starring role at League One Wycombe last term.
He twice faced the title-winning Blues in that campaign, finishing on the losing side on both occasions,
before switching to the south coast from the Hammers.
Mousinho added: ‘As soon as we could get Freddie into the side we did.
He played at Burnley and has kept his place pretty much ever since.
‘For him it has been about adjustment to a different level, adjustment to a different level of a side which hasn’t been pulling up trees for the majority of the season – that is a big adjustment.
‘He has come in and made sure he’s really developed that physical side to his game. He is really, really promising, an excellent technical player, and has coped with it really well.’
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