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John Mousinho has paid tribute to Pompey’s head of recruitment for rapidly zeroing in on Alexander Milosevic amid the club’s defensive crisis.
The Blues boss believes Brad Wall showed his diligence by quickly identifying the Swedish international, when given the testing call of finding suitable options as they shorn of central defenders.
Milosevic came in earlier this month, less than two weeks after the low-key operator was given the task of putting a list of available free transfer options together.
The former Wolves, Liverpool and Manchester City man remains a mysterious figure to most Pompey fans, after arriving in May of last year as Phil Bordman’s successor.
But with the Blues losing Hayden Matthews in addition to Conor Shaughnessy, Rob Atkinson and Ibane Bowat, Wall’s professionalism quickly had his side ready to react in the free agent market.
Mousinho said: ‘Straightaway after the QPR game I felt we were short of options, so I asked Brad and the recruitment department to source the list of free agents.
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‘As you can imagine, when you look at the market at any time, January or summer, there are very few options that you’d want to take and very few free agents.
‘It’s difficult to find a player you’d want to take when you can buy, loan or take free agents.
‘So it’s difficult to go through everything and find a player you’re not taking just for the sake of it - and find one who can come in and is ready to be fit.
‘Brad did that very, very quickly and had a list on the computer by Sunday evening after the QPR game.
‘That was testament to Brad who got it through very quickly, so we could make the best decision we could.’
Mousinho has given an insight into the amount of work Wall and the rest of Pompey’s recruitment department are getting through, in an effort to aid Pompey’s transfer business.
That is seeing literally hundreds of players identified before being painstakingly whittle down into a short-list of serious targets.
Mousinho added: ‘That’s something people will not always see, but they do a huge amount of work with the recruitment of any players at this football club.
‘By the time we have a player who comes through the door, even if Alexander was different, if we had a player coming through the door in the summer who was a permanent, you could guarantee that the player was at the back end of a list of probably 100 at the start.
‘That would then be whittled down to a serious list which is 20 strong, and then over a two or three-month process building into May and June. There’s a huge amount of work which goes into the recruitment of those players.
‘That’s whether it’s video scouting, calling agents or calling clubs trying to get the right player.’
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