Portsmouth ready to hasten out-of-favour man's Fratton Park departure as he nears injury return
The 26-year-old has made 11 appearances for the Blues since joining in September 2025
Pompey are ready to step up attempts to offload Josef Bursik as he closes in on a training return.
The goalkeeper has still to make his injury comeback after damaging a quad in the opening four minutes of April’s 3-1 victory at Stoke.
During that ongoing absence, Daniel Bielica has joined from NAC Breda, while Ben Killip last week signed a new two-year deal.
Those developments have left Bursik surplus to requirements, despite impressing in his 11 appearances as stand-in for Nicolas Schmid in the 2025-26 campaign.
According to John Mousinho, the 26-year-old is now nearing a return to full training after four months on the sidelines.
And once fit, that could finally signal the departure of the ex-Stoke man, whose contract expires at the season’s end.
‘I will be very surprised if there’s no interest’
Mousinho told The News: ‘At the moment, Joe is just working hard to come back from injury, he’s very, very close to coming back.
‘Once he gets back and once he gets fully fit, we will have that conversation (about his future) and see if there’s anything we can do that works for both parties.
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‘I will be very surprised if there’s no interest. He had a really good season last year considering the games he played and some of the performances he put in.
‘If we end up with four goalkeepers, though, we end up with four. It’s quite a nice thing for me. Probably a bit of a headache, but to have the quality in the building we have now is great.’
Four goalkeepers on Portsmouth’s books
Certainly Pompey have no intention of including four goalkeepers in the 25-man Football League squad list which must be lodged after the transfer window shuts.
Schmid, Bielica and Killip can be expected to be named, leaving Bursik as the odd man out and unable to feature competitively for the Blues unless he has been registered.
It’s a fate fellow goalkeeper Jordan Archer suffered last term, subsequently failing to make an appearance until his two-year deal expired at the season’s end.
In the meantime, Killip, who arrived at Fratton Park from Barnsley for an undisclosed fee in February 2025, has signed his latest Blues deal.
And Mousinho believes the 30-year-old fully deserves to extend his south-coast stay after seven first-team appearances.
‘We wanted to keep him around’
He added: ‘It was one of those things that Ben deserved - and we wanted to show him our commitment as we progress as a football club.
‘There are many, many clubs who would have taken Ben at the drop of a hat in the summer, but we wanted to keep him around, so that’s the reason we’ve signed the contract.
‘He has shown a huge amount of commitment to us and we wanted to reciprocate that from our side with a new deal.’
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