He's back: Portsmouth's forgotten signing returns to deliver boost for relegation run-in
The Swansea loanee is back in Blues training after being out since November through injury
Pompey have been handed a relegation run-in boost after the return of their forgotten signing.
Florian Bianchini hasn’t featured for the Blues since the end of November, with tendonitis in the knee subsequently sidelining the Frenchman.
That lengthy absence compounded an already desperately disappointing loan spell for the Swansea attacker, who wasn’t even registered in Pompey’s Football League 25-man squad list for the second half of the season.
However, Bianchini has now been back in full training for the last two weeks, with John Mousinho praising him for ‘training quite well’.
It's a timely comeback for the winger, with five matches of his Fratton Park spell remaining, including Tuesday night’s visit of Ipswich (8pm) as Pompey strive to stay in the Championship.
Although, with just one remaining spot in their Football League squad list, the 24-year-old would require to be registered before he can feature again this term.
‘He has been training quite well to be honest’
Mousinho told The News: ‘Florian is back in full training and is under consideration. He has been back for two weeks now, he’s absolutely fine.
‘He has been training quite well to be honest, but he’s been out for a long, long time. We haven’t registered him yet, we’ve still got one squad space left. Josh Knight and Flo will be the two obvious candidates to come and be registered.
‘What we are not doing is jumping ahead to anything before we involve either of them in the squad. As soon as we want to involve them in the squad, then we’ll make the decision.
‘If we pick up five injuries to centre-halves over a weekend or we decided Josh was the right one to put in, then we would probably reserve it for that.
‘If we thought all of a sudden it was going to be Flo, then we would do that as well. At the minute, though, we are not rushing to do that.
‘It is handy having Flo back. I guess where he’s unlucky is that we’ve recently had four wingers available for the first time in a long time - Harvey, Gustavo, Milli and Keshi. We’ve not had that for a while.’
Last Portsmouth outing on November 29
Bianchini had made 11 appearances for the Blues up until the November 29 defeat to Bristol, when he was an unused substitute.
Since then, he has been absent through an ongoing knee issue which, at one stage, required him to journey to France to visit a specialist.
During his absence, Pompey added Milli Alli, Gustavo Caballero and Keshi Anderson to their ranks in the January transfer window, while Harvey Blair has now returned from his latest injury.
And, with plenty of available attacking options at present, there wasn’t even room for deadline-day signing Jacob Brown at the Riverside Stadium, let alone the possibility of a fit-again Bianchini.
‘We are looking a bit healthy there’
Mousinho added: ‘We seem to go through these spells in certain positions. We went to Sheffield Wednesday at the start of January, having just signed Milli on the Thursday. He was the only winger we could take to Hillsborough.
‘We had the same situation with the centre-halves against Southampton in January. We had one fit centre-half and ended up with four full-backs across the back line towards the end of the game in one of the biggest matches of the season.
‘We’ve seemed to have had that in patches. At the minute, we have a few wingers back and are looking a bit healthy there.’