With multiple English and Scottish clubs sacking their manager this week, job openings have opened up, however, Portsmouth manager John Mousinho doesn’t see a future away from the South Coast any time soon.
Portsmouth currently sits atop League One, and the young manager seems to be lovely every minute of it as Portsmouth hosts Port Vale this weekend in an attempt to extend their unbeaten start to the season.
Despite the outside noise around him after Bradford City, Gillingham and Rangers sacked their manager this week, Mousinho is focused on his job with Pompey and praised the football structure above him and his players for buying into his ideas.
Superb Start
Following on from their impressive end to last season, Portsmouth have begun the new campaign right where they’ve left off, with just one loss in their last 17 league games. Only nine months into his first managerial job, Mousinho’s turnaround since taking over from Danny Cowley at the start of the year is impressive.
Managerial Dominos?
While none of the current job openings across the EFL and Scottish Premiership may be tempting Mousinho away from Portsmouth, the potential domino effect could have an impact. The recent flurry in openings will only cause more managerial jobs to become available, and if the right door opens, it could be enough to cause havoc at Fratton Park.
What’s Been Said:
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s game, Mousinho spoke about how much he is enjoying his time at Portsmouth and how his start with them has exceeded his own expectations, with quotes from The News.
‘At the minute that sort of talk (life away from Portsmouth) is just something I haven’t even had the chance to process. It’s probably best to just joke about it when that sort of thing happens and honestly so, so far from my radar.
‘I’m just loving every minute of being at Portsmouth and very, very grateful for the opportunity. To be honest, I feel a million miles away from any of that (talk of interest from other clubs), I just need to keep myself grounded and focus on the next game.
‘It’s probably gone better than even I could’ve imagined. I put that down to a lot of factors, not the least the structure behind the scenes here and how that is let me just be able to focus on coaching the side. Then how good the players have been is enormous, too. I feel very, very lucky to have been dropped in at this point.
‘The second part is as good as we’ve been, I naturally want to restart and go again (on the next game) and we’ve achieved absolutely nothing. So we don’t get carried away with anything – and that includes myself.
‘I’m always very critical of the team, how we go about things, the staff and myself, too. It’s a really important point that it’s been a really good start – but there’s still lots of work to do.’
Writer’s View
It seems Mousinho is very settled at Portsmouth and no current managerial job could tempt him away from that. As he is so young for a manager at 37 years old and this is his first job in management, I think it’s smart for the former Oxford United man to focus on Pompey if things are as good behind the scenes as he refers to.
