The stats don’t lie, right? Yang Minhyeok has only seen 23 minutes of match time in Portsmouth’s opening five Championship matches since moving there on loan from Tottenham Hotspur, and those minutes came in Pompey’s opening week win over Oxford. Not great! Surely this means that Yang is either out of his depth in the second division of English football, or alternately that he’s somehow managed to land at a club where his manager hates him and will never play him over more established players this season.
A wasted loan, an wasted season. What a whiff from Tottenham’s scouting department. Levy Out.
Except it doesn’t seem to mean any of those things. According to an article in the Portsmouth News, one of the regional papers, Yang’s absence from the lineup isn’t because manager John Mousinho (obviously a Great Value-brand Jose Mourinho, amirite) hates him — it’s just taken this long for him to train and get up to speed with his teammates after something of a rough preseason at Spurs. In fact, Pompey sporting director Rich Hughes had nothing but good things to say about him, and tips him to take off flying at the south coast club in short order.
“Minhyeok has been great. He’s probably had a bit of a bumpy pre-season in terms of going away with the (Spurs) first-team and not getting many minutes, so that has set him back a bit. However, the training block he had with us during the last international break has been really good for him.
“He’s not been away, this is the first time he’s had a real consolidated period of training, and he’s shownveryone what a good player he is. Hopefully that will get him up to sharpness quickly. Minhyeok has been bright around the place, we’ve been really pleased with him. He will get his chance and I am sure will show everyone what a talented footballer he is as well.
“He came on against Oxford in the first match and showed some nice glimpses, but then it has been about the way the last four games have panned out for his not featuring. At Norwich we were chasing the game and it went very physical and aerial. For West Brom, we had to defend and press from the front with real aggression, then defend the ball in the box. Similarly, against Preston, the opposition got bigger and bigger as the game went on and that probably predicated John’s decision to make the changes he did.
“We are pleased to have been able to bring Minhyeok in and, like all the wingers, he will need to bide his time. There is competition for every shirt now, that’s what we always strive to achieve.”
Well, that’s encouraging. Yang is one of three new wide additions to Portsmouth’s roster, which means he’ll be in competition for minutes. But competition doesn’t need to be a negative — it can provide great motivation for players to work hard and impress in order to catch the manager’s eye, and we know that Minhyeok is absolutely motivated to follow in the footsteps of his footballing idol Son Heung-Min at Tottenham.
Hughes implied that even in Yang’s debut, Oxford recognized his pace and his offensive threat and shifted tactics to neutralize him. That, according to him, is a good sign — that opposition teams are worried when he’s playing.
‘You go back to the Oxford game. Flo (Bianchini) had a couple of opportunities and a couple of moments to really execute the game. Then John made the change to bring Minhyeok on for Flo and the game changed. Oxford went to a back three and launched everything forward, so it sort of isolated him out of the game.
“That’s our challenge to evolve as a team, to be able to maintain and compete with those levels of physicality and still be able to play good football, trying to make those games a bit more comfortable for everyone.”
Portsmouth host Sheffield Wednesday this Saturday at 10, at the exact same time Spurs play at Brighton. Hopefully Hughes’ comments suggest that Yang will be getting his opportunity to play sooner rather than later.
