Portsmouth's Struggle for Consistency in the Championship

The Championship rarely lets anyone breathe. Ask around the division and you’ll hear the same answer: it’s brutal, it’s constant, it never stops.

Portsmouth, though, have been living in a strange pocket of calm.

The odd postponement against Wolves has left them with just one midweek fixture so far. Now comes an even stranger stretch: three weeks without a league game, and only a handful of players – likely four – heading off on international duty. In a league built on attrition, Pompey have been stuck in a kind of limbo.

John Mousinho has already used 28 players this season. That number alone tells a story. Only three of them have started every league match. Just seven have managed to complete 90 minutes more than once in the Championship.

That’s not all down to rotation for rotation’s sake. Mousinho does like to lean on his bench and exploit the five-substitute rule, and this squad has more depth and quality than previous years. But the constant shuffling has also been forced on him by injuries, niggles and players short of full fitness.

New arrivals Marko Milovanovic, Jayden Meghoma and Tyrese Shade all turned up needing conditioning work. Shade and Milovanovic had barely trained properly because their transfers were in the balance, and Milovanovic has since picked up a minor injury. Abu Kamara was eased in gently too, his minutes carefully managed rather than thrown in at full tilt.

Then there’s Ryan Kavuma-McQueen. Seventeen years old. Talented, energetic, and already important – but still a teenager who needs protecting. He’s also been playing with a broken hand, which only heightens the need for caution over his game time.

And the wide areas have taken a hammering. Losing one winger is normal. Losing three is not. Josh Murphy, Keshi Anderson and now Luke Brooke-Smith have all gone down. At some point that stops being bad luck and starts feeling like a curse.

Marlon Pack missed the opening of the campaign. Regan Poole has been battling a hamstring problem. Zak Swanson and Ebou Adams carried issues from the end of last season into the summer, delaying their readiness. Each individual case is understandable; collectively, it has left Mousinho constantly recalculating.

Conor Shaughnessy offered a rare positive note last weekend, looking somewhere close to his best again. But even he missed the only midweek game of the season so far, and Mousinho has been careful not to promise he’ll play more than once a week. Given how the past two seasons have been blighted by injuries for the defender, that caution is rooted in experience, not pessimism.

Every club in the Championship suffers injuries. Portsmouth are not unique in that. What they will expect, though, is that by the end of September the majority of those who are available can get through a full 90 minutes without it being a major talking point.

Up to now, it has felt like Mousinho is juggling on a tightrope. The deeper squad means he has more options when a plate drops, but he’s still constantly reaching, constantly adjusting.

That’s why this three-week break feels so awkward to him. On paper, it’s a chance to rest, reset and rebuild fitness. In reality, it drops right before the schedule turns savage.

The South Coast derby will ignite a run of five games in 14 days. Eight in 28. High intensity, high stakes, and very little room to hide. Some of those fixtures are as demanding as they come at this level.

In that spell, Mousinho can’t afford to be nursing half-fit players through 60 minutes and then looking to the bench. He’ll need more of his squad to be trusted 90-minute performers, week after week, under pressure.

The plate-spinning has been manageable so far. When the derby arrives and the fixtures pile up behind it, we’ll find out whether Portsmouth’s squad is built to endure the grind – or whether the Championship’s relentlessness is about to catch up with them.