Yet another set-back for wantaway Portsmouth man as Fratton Park misery continues
The former Liverpool man has featured 29 times for the Blues since joining in August 2024
Wantaway Harvey Blair has been struck down by a fresh set-back in his luckless Fratton Park career.
Although John Mousinho is refusing to shut the door on the former Liverpool man, who currently isn’t even registered to play for the Blues and has expressed a desire to leave.
The 22-year-old is presently being eased back into training, having been absent through illness ‘for a period of time’.
As a consequence, Blair missed the recent behind-closed-doors friendly at Chelsea, with Pompey running out 2-0 winners after fielding a squad bolstered by five Academy players.
It’s the latest blow to the 22-year-old’s Pompey career, having featured just 29 times since his August 2024 arrival from Anfield. Although his south-coast future continues to look bleak.
‘Harvey’s had a bit of time off with an illness’
Mousinho told The News: ‘First of all, I have no issue if a player wants to leave and we can try to facilitate that.
‘If there was an option that came up, we would have taken it, Harvey would have taken it - unfortunately there wasn’t.
‘At the minute, Harvey is in and around, he’s training, we’ve still got options in terms of what we do with the squad and we’ll just monitor that as we go along. Quicker than you think, January will come around and we’ll see if we can pick a solution up.
‘You don’t know what the future is going to hold. Even this window between now and January, we still have two squad spots, we’ll see how that pans out and just stay flexible.
‘Harvey has also had a bit of time off with an illness, so we are bringing him back into that at the minute.
‘He has started to train over the past couple of days, so we have to be very, very wary of that because he’s had a bit of time off. He’s just not particularly felt very well, so we’ve got to be cautious with him.
‘The big thing with Harvey is can we keep him fit, can we get him fit, can we keep him fit and then we can go from there.’
Potential move to Poland fell through
Sporting director Rich Hughes previously told The News he didn’t expect to see Blair feature for Pompey again ‘unless something drastic happens’.
The winger had asked to leave Pompey in the summer, yet potential moves couldn’t be sealed, including to Polish club Widzew Lodz.
And with the two vacant slots in their Football League 25-man squad allocated for the returns of Josh Murphy and Connor Ogilvie, Blair won’t play again until January at the earliest.
Mousinho added: ‘There’s always a number of reasons why things work or why things don’t work - and sometimes it’s just a circumstance of where the club has been over the last couple of years.
‘Has Harvey been given that consistent run of games? I’ve never felt we’ve really been in a position to possibly do that.
‘The most consistent run of games he’s had was around this time last year with the build up to Christmas and unfortunately in the Arsenal game he got injured. Although he played quite a few off the back of that, he’s just never been able to get that run.
‘Whenever it has come to the crunch time and the chips have been down, we've maybe not had that chance to properly integrate him into a side.
‘Maybe if we had been a bit more of a mid-table Championship side, it could have been different for a number of players.’
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