The Blues fought off Derby, Sunderland, Stoke and Brentford to land the highly-regarded Terry Devlin in a £90,000 deal in June.
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Regardless, since appearing as a substitute at Derby for his Football League debut, Devlin has featured in five of their last six league games.
‘At Barnsley, they were getting the better of us down their left-hand side in the second half. We had two players there with Joe Rafferty returning from a three-game suspension and Paddy Lane returning from a long-term injury and playing back-to-back games.
‘Paddy was exhausted after 78 minutes, so we needed Terry to come in and do a job on their most threatening side – and I thought he was excellent.
‘He provided us with a massive lift in energy, got around the pitch really well and made a huge contribution. We’ve also had no problem getting him involved in other league
‘Terry is massively developing. When he first came into the building, he was a young pro, full of enthusiasm who hadn’t quite had the minutes training at this level with the intensity required and hadn’t played a minute in the league.
‘Yet he has adjusted very, very quickly to that, which can’t have been an easy thing to do. He’s playing for Pompey, there’s a huge amount of demand on the pitch as well, expectations, and this is a 19-year-old.
‘He has put himself into a position where he’s comfortable coming in and playing games, being very unlucky not to start a league match yet. A couple of things have gone against him, such as the form of the lads playing ahead of him and possibly the tweaks in shape as well.
‘Terry has a really bright future and we are really pleased with him.
Devlin remains away on international duty, with Northern Ireland under-21s next in action on Monday night against Serbia (7.30pm).
He has so far scored once in eight games since arriving at Fratton Park, while has been a member of the last 10 successive squads he has been available for.
Mousinho added: ‘We trust him and hopefully he sees a lot of trust is there.
‘The easy thing would have been putting a young lad out on loan or maybe letting him sit and wait to develop, not being involved in squads – but he has forced himself into the reckoning, it’s nothing that we have done.’
