And he’s adamant the Blues would have risked injuring top performers had they named them in the starting line-up at West Brom.
The Baggies blew dreadful Pompey away with a 5-1 success, thereby inflicting a wretched seventh straight away defeat on Mousinho’s men.
Ahead of their seventh game in 25 days, the Blues’ head coach opted to rest key players Josh Murphy, Callum Lang, Freddie Potts, Rob Atkinson and Jordan Williams.
And with those five occupying the bench, the much-changed visitors shipped in four goals in 19 minutes during an abysmal first half to underpin another shocking away performance.
Mousinho told The News: ‘We just had to freshen things up. The schedule for us in January has been absolutely brutal, I don’t think there has been any other side in the Championship that’s had to face what we’ve had with the two games that have been rearranged.
‘That has ultimately meant that, over the past couple of weeks, the workload has been too much to sustain for lads playing every single minute of every game. Particularly the ones at the top end of the pitch where we need that explosiveness and we need that output.
‘I really didn’t think we had a choice (against West Brom) and I would have made the same decision again even now.
‘If we hadn’t, we might be sitting here picking up two or three injuries off the back of the data we had from the games on Tuesday (Stoke) and Saturday (Middlesbrough). As it is, they are all fit and will be available for selection for Millwall.
‘We looked at what I thought we needed to protect and the physical output in terms of what we could do with them. Then we looked at what we could change. That was the thought process, just making sure we kept fresh and kept players injury-free.
‘Bearing in mind we have gone away from home and not made those changes – and still had similar results.
‘You just can’t pick the same team every game, no-one does it. There’s a reason no-one does it because you just can’t do it.
‘The physical output is massive and we’ve had game after game after game. Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Stoke, West Brom. There are just too many matches for us to be able to cope with that.
‘Speak to any head coach or manager about the schedule in January they will say it’s tough – and we have those two extra games on top of that.’
Of the five moved to the bench, only Rob Atkinson didn’t feature as a substitute in the embarrassing Hawthorns defeat.
Potts was introduced in the 58th minute, while Murphy, Lang and Williams came on in the 69th minute – with Murphy and Lang involved in Thomas Waddingham’s injury-time consolation.
Mousinho added: ‘We brought four of them on with the scoreline at 5-0. At that stage it’s going to be a very, very different game.
‘West Brom dropped off, in certain ways that made it a bit easier for us, and in certain ways that made it more difficult because they played with a bit more freedom and probably a bit looser.
‘I know they’ll be frustrated at conceding the goal, which maybe they don’t do if it’s 1-0 or 2-0. The lads who came on had the run out and unfortunately it was too little, too late.’
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