John Mousinho stepped back into the First Team like he had never been away on Saturday as he skippered Oxford United to an important 2-1 win away at Shrewsbury.
The 35-year-old marshalled United’s back line superbly and was quick to praise others after when he spoke to iFollow.
“It wasn’t our best performance of the season and we were pretty poor really in spells in the second half” he said with typical honesty “but I thought we played relatively well in the first half, keeping the ball comfortably without causing Shrewsbury too many problems. We weren’t struggling with our shape or the way we were playing but there were just a few too many stray passes and trying to play a bit too much in the wrong areas cost us.
"At half time we were pleased to be 1-0 up considering we had created one chance! We knew that Shrewsbury would come at us and unfortunately we didn’t really match it until after they scored. But the positive is that once they scored we didn’t crumble. They did create one half decent chance but you would probably expect that from the home side in that situation.
"After that we were more comfortable for the last 15 minutes and that is testament to all of the lads. I thought Steve Seddon’s performance was brilliant - he came in late into a role that is unfamiliar to him and as the game went on he grew and grew. He won the physical battle and as his aggression defensively started to show you also saw what he is capable of going forward. Hopefully he takes confidence from that performance because we know he is a really good player and I am really pleased for him.
“And Cameron showed a lot of character with the penalty. I’ll always take one if required but it was my first league start since November 2020 and we had a player taking the penalty who scored four penalties in one game last time he took one, so I didn’t feel I was needed! He had to wait a long time and I’ve been in that situation and know it can be hard to concentrate so fair play to him for slotting it away.”
After playing in the Oxfordshire Senior Cup against Thame in midweek Mous might have been hoping for a break after a long week, but wasn’t expecting too much rest when he got home from Shropshire.
“The recovery protocol is an ice bath, go to the gym the next day and recover, but nowadays I will be handed two children and they won’t give two hoots that I have played two 90 minutes in a week. And nor should they, it will be great.”
See the full interview plus extended highlights in iFollow.