John Mousinho has defended Pompey’s under-fire transfer business.

And the Blues boss highlighted how the recruitment carried out last term at Fratton Park has allowed the club to reach towards pushing on in the Championship.

Mousinho acknowledged assessing the success of signings remains a ‘subjective’ business, but he views the work carried out against the players’ contributions towards keeping his club in the second tier.

And when doing so, the majority of the those brought in under sporting director Rich Hughes have played roles in achieving that objective.

That represents undoubted success, though, there has been criticism of recent business - including that carried out last season.

Of the 11 signings made in the summer of 2025 only Adrian Segečić is regularly involved in the first team, while Ebou Adams was the clear success of January’s trading from seven signings.

When asked about what represents success in player trading, Mousinho said: ‘Who knows, right, because within that you can be really subjective as well.

‘There’s players we took on loan who didn’t necessarily play much in the side.

‘I think Conor (Chaplin) overall he played that many games it would be difficult to not see him as a hit

‘We probably had others.

‘If you looked at bringing Jacob Brown in last year.

‘Jacob had a massive contribution to us staying in the league.

‘He probably didn’t play as much as he would’ve liked and he was in and out here and there.

‘But ultimately we needed him to come in and do what he did.

‘We’ve pretty much needed that over the past couple of years with every, single signing we had

‘Some have ended up moving on, but had that contribution in the league still.

As well as highlighting Chaplin and Brown, the likes of Millenic Alli, Gustavo Caballero, John Swift and Josh Knight are examples of players who wouldn’t be viewed by most as clear transfer hits, but have all picked up plenty of game time as Pompey have remained in the Championship.

Mousinho added: ‘There’s some players who, on the surface of things, may not have appeared to be big hits.

‘They’ve done enough to keep us where we are, enable us to have the summer we’ve had and hopefully a few more recruitment windows which enable us to push on.’