The sight of Steve Finnan limping away from the Benfica defeat last weekend was something that many feared would happen sooner or later, but for it to happen after some 25 minutes of what had been a decent enough debut was hard to take…
According to what Finnan has told The News he will be out for a while, which definitely rules him out of the Fulham game for starters: ‘I think it’s going to be three weeks or something like that.
‘On top of that I also need more pre-season training, so we’ll just have to see
It is ‘said’ that there are serious doubts over him being fit for Birmingham and Arsenal as well.
Positives that he was taking were ‘at least it is not a recurrence of an old injury, so that is something’ but I do like his attitude and have liked what I have heard from him so far – he sounds very much like he is one of those that ‘does’ want to be here: ‘hopefully it will not be that long. I desperately want to get out there and play football for Portsmouth.
‘I’ve been here a week now and am really enjoying it. I’ve been made to feel very welcome and it was good bonding in Portugal.
‘I can’t wait to get out there again.’
All we can do is hope that this is just one of those ‘unfortunate things’ that happens and it came about more due to a lack of a proper half time warm up and is not going to set the tone of his Pompey career…I think it would be unfair to write him off as a completely ‘crock’ until he comes back from this setback, if others repeatedly followed then fair enough.
We now have to decide who comes in to replace him?
Do we turn to Martin Cranie, Marc Wilson, Younes Kaboul, Luke Wilkinson or one of the trialist’s we have looked at? But that would mean signing them.
All in all we are not exactly lacking cover in that area, but the lack of experience is the worry. If we shifted Kaboul across we then need to move someone else into the heart of the defence.
I would guess a lot also depends on The Herminator’s fitness? If he is back maybe that is an option in the middle if Kaboul goes out onto the right, and we then fill in the left back spot?
A name that I would not completely rule out playing at either left or right back is young James Hurst – I reckon that he has real quality about him, so, inexperienced or not, if he is good enough why not give him a go…
PLAY UP POMPEY!
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