The luckless right-back’s injury-hampered season has suffered another blow with a suspected hamstring injury.
Williams collected the problem after appearing as a substitute in Saturday’s defeat at West Brom – a match he had been rested for.
Indeed, the ex-Barnsley man, along with Callum Lang, Rob Atkinson, Josh Murphy and Freddie Potts had all been dropped to the bench in a bid to protect them from potential injury amid a gruelling fixture schedule.
Yet all but Atkinson were subsequently called upon in the second half of the 5-1 loss – and it resulted in Williams sustaining a hamstring tear.
Mousinho told The News: ‘I think Jordan’s injury gives a bit more evidence to the argument (about resting players). He was obviously one of the players we rested, we were also really happy with the fact we could get him some minutes.
‘We actually felt it was important for those players to get some minutes so they weren’t completely rested and deloaded for five days coming into the Millwall game.
‘That probably goes to show where the dangers lie with playing this many games. Even then, if you look at Jordan, he had only played Saturday (Middlesbrough) and Tuesday (Stoke). There were players we had to take out of West Brom that had played Wednesday, Saturday, Tuesday – and it had become too much of a risk for them.
‘Those were the reasons we made those changes at West Brom, firstly to protect people from injury. It was a shame we didn’t get the result against Millwall, but we’d have made the same decision.
‘I don’t regret bringing Jordan on against West Brom. All the indications were he would be absolutely fine to do it – and the reason we gave him those 20 minutes was we needed to protect Conor Ogilvie.
‘We have spoken about the lack of depth at left-back at the moment and he’s a player who just hasn’t been able to have any rest whatsoever. The only time he’s been able to come out of the side was for Wycombe.
‘Apart from that and Sheffield United, he has started every single game in the league and played almost every minute, so we have to be really wary of that.
‘It was something we were in a good position to be able to do with Jordan, unfortunately it hasn’t worked out as we would have liked.
‘But no regret. We made the decision at the time in the best interests – and unfortunately Jordan has picked up an injury.’
Williams was yesterday scheduled to undergo a scan on his hamstring to discover the full extent of the injury.
He had only returned to action on New Year’s Day after almost two months out with another hamstring problem.
The 25-year-old subsequently spent two matches on the bench, before starting three of the next four matches in all competitions.
Yet that 21-minute cameo at West Brom proved to be his undoing in the latest comeback of a campaign which has also seen him sidelined by a hip flexor injury.
Mousinho added: ‘Jordan came back and trained for a period, he played against Wycombe.
‘We were actually really pleased with the way we were able to reintroduce Jordan into the fold and, because we had that Wycombe game, where we could give him 60 minutes.
‘It was ideal for us to be able to do that and then give him time off against Blackburn, so there was a week until he had to start against Middlesbrough.
‘For Middlesbrough, we managed to sub him off, the same for Stoke, so we were really conscious of his minutes and making sure we got everything as good as we could.
‘The biggest concerns for us were when Jordan started games, not necessarily coming off the bench at West Brom.’
Discussion about this post