John Mousinho, who is on loan at Stevenage from the Lilywhites, says he would have ‘loved’ to have played against his parent club

John Mousinho says he would love to have played in tomorrow night’s match against his parent club Preston, but not doing so will allow him to do some work on the training ground following his recovery from injury.

The midfielder played 90 minutes – and scored Boro’s third goal – in Saturday’s 3-1 victory over Tranmere Rovers in what was his second match in the space of five days after his comeback from a calf injury.

The 27-year-old is on loan from the Lilywhites and will not be allowed to play as Stevenage look to get a fourth win in five League 1 matches, something Mousinho says is ‘frustrating’ but which has been known about for some time.

“It is frustrating. I think there’s going to be positives and negatives,” Mousinho said.

“Obviously I’d love to play against them, both parties knew that it wasn’t going to be viable and I’m sure the manager’s been planning for it for a while.

“Also without having any action midweek I do get a chance now to make sure I am fit and well rested. Maybe I can do bits of work on Monday and Tuesday I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.

“[The calf injury] kept me out for a couple of games, but it was less frustrating than a little tear in the hamstring or doing something muscular. It was just a knock and it took a bit of time to come out.

“Thankfully it was only 10 days, but I missed a couple of games because of the fixture congestion but hopefully it’s all resolved now.

“I’ve still got a lot of work to do in terms of my injury prevention and making sure I keep fit. Thankfully in the two games that I was absent the lads picked up two unbelievable wins.”

Mousinho is one of four players that followed manager Graham Westley to the North West after the manager joined Preston in January 2012, but Saturday’s goalscorer says that the North End side has changed quite a bit since Westley was sacked just over a year ago.

Mousinho said: “I think any team as soon as you change the manager there’s going to be different things going on.

“The team has evolved quite a lot. I think you’re going to have players in there that the manager knows very well and signed and have done very well off the back of that.

“Hopefully that’ll be a slight advantage, but on the other hand there are going to be players in there we don’t know.

“[However] levels of scouting with videos and video analysis these days we would have had them thoroughly scouted anyway.

“At the end of the day it’s a long time ago now and we’ve got to deal with it as if it’s just another team coming here on Tuesday night.”