"Tricky situation" - Portsmouth FC urged to let two players leave in January | OneFootball

Pompey will be hoping for further improvements in January despite slowly starting to show their ability in the Championship.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

Portsmouth have slowly started to make improvements in the Championship after a very difficult start, and are showing that they can fight against what looked like certain relegation after the first few months of the season.

John Mousinho's side won promotion from League One as champions in 2023/24, but life in the second tier has been difficult at times.

However, a recent 3-0 win over Bristol City has shown that they have more than enough to compete in this division when they are at their very best.

With the January transfer window just over two weeks away from opening, supporters and Mousinho alike will be prepared for incomings, but letting go of some of those on the fringes of the squad may be necessary to allow Portsmouth to make the improvements that they need.

Verdict made on potential Portsmouth exits

While their form has started to improve, it is clear that Pompey are still a few steps away from where they need to be. Consistency is the next challenge for the Blues, but they do now have a platform to work from.

However, freeing up space in the squad and the wage bill will be important to ensure that they can bring in more talent.

Football League World has asked their Portsmouth Fan Pundit, Miltos Ioannidis, which player he believes will look for a permanent or loan move away in January.

Unable to settle on one, he told FLW: "It is an interesting discussion to have because at the moment the picture for a lot of players' futures is highly uncertain, and I would choose to get all the fringe players out of the way.

"So, players like Anthony Scully, who has very recently come back from an unsuccessful loan spell at Colchester, Tom Lowery and Ben Stevenson, these three fringe players have no chance of playing for Portsmouth ever again. So, I'm sure if an opportunity pops up in January, Portsmouth will do absolutely everything to ship them to another club. If not, the summer definitely.

"There are a lot of other players that I just don't know what the club's vision is for them. Abdoulaye Kamara springs to mind because he keeps getting on our bench, but he hasn't played many minutes so far. So, you just wonder if the club feel like he's not ready to play yet, and I don't know what Kamara's wish for him at the moment is, or if he's happy to keep being on the bench, and if he's just preparing for his opportunity, and he's happy with that.

"Would he rather go to another club on loan? Maybe even in another country, maybe back in France to play games and become better that way."

Miltos continued: "The one player on the other side of the spectrum, who I think will potentially be looking to leave the club on a permanent deal, is Will Norris. It's just a really tricky situation for Norris at the moment. I don't really know what is going on.

"He hasn't played at all since that 6-1 defeat against Stoke. He hasn't been in any squads since then, Nicolas Schmid has become our number one, Jordan Archer has taken his place on the bench. I don't know what the future holds for him.

"He could want to leave the club in January, so we will have to wait and see, but these two are definitely the two players that I want to pinpoint for different reasons who could leave the club in January, so it will be interesting to see."

Norris is out of favour with Mousinho despite success last season

It's been a frustrating season for Norris, with the goalkeeper playing throughout the first couple of months.

He was dropped from the starting XI following Portsmouth's 6-1 defeat to Stoke City, and has found it difficult to recover his place in the team, a far cry from his side's promotion campaign when he was made an integral part of it by Mousinho.

Norris played every single game, keeping 19 clean sheets, conceding just 41 goals as Pompey beat Derby County to the League One title.

He will want to play regular football once again, and returning to the division that he had such great success in last year could be the perfect way to do that and prove to Portsmouth just how much quality he still possesses as a goalkeeper.