Record £1.25m man set for Portsmouth future as Fratton career enters key period
Details on the future of the record-breaking signing at the end of his first full season in the Championship.
Hayden Matthews is being earmarked for a stay at Fratton Park with his Pompey journey entering a critical spell.
The News understands the Socceroos centre-back is a wanted man at PO4 next season, despite a campaign which saw him fail to make a significant first-team impact.
Socceroos defender wanted at Pompey - but pre-season a key period
Matthews failed to feature over the second half of the campaign, until two starts in the final two games once the Blues’ Championship status was assured.
The 21-year-old made just nine starts with a further four appearances coming off the bench, though he did spend a couple of months on the sidelines after picking up an ankle injury at Bristol City on New Year’s Day.
Hopes were high over what the £1.25m capture from Sydney FC could achieve going into the 2025-26 season, after his arrival in England in January of last year - for a record fee for an A-League defender.
After being assessed in pre-season, however, Josh Knight was recruited as an experienced central defensive operator with Matthews used sparingly once the campaign got underway.
Despite his lack of football, Pompey’s football operation see Matthews as a young operator with the physical attributes and quality in possession to make the grade in the Championship.
It will be a key period on that front when the Blues return for pre-season training, however, and assessments are made over the levels individuals can hit in the second tier next term.
Before that, however, the 6ft 5in man will be hoping to make a late charge into Australia’s World Cup plans, after linking up with his country for a pre-tournament training camp in the US.
Boss Tony Popovic will assess Matthews there, before naming his squad after a friendly with Mexico on May 30 in Los Angeles.
Matthews has shown signs of coming to terms with the physical demands of English football in his recent Pompey outings against Stoke City and Birmingham.
But the Sydney-born talent has been honest about how tough it’s been to make the transition from the A-League to the Championship. He addressed those challenges at the end of last year, when making a decent run of five starts on the bounce in December.
Matthews told The News: ‘It’s always my calves, it’s always my calves. It’s been good to get consistent minutes. I feel like I’m at that point where my body feels able to continue to build and play 90 minutes each and every week.
‘It's going to be a tough period coming up now so I’m going to have to look after my body really well but very happy to get through the whole 90 minutes today.
‘It’s a strange one. The start of my season was quite rocky, not really getting minutes here and then gone away with the national team, a lot of travel, a lot of everything, different scenarios and things going on which led to a lack of minutes.
‘I think my first game (of the season), the Stoke one, I started to cramp up around the 65th minute, which is way too early in the game to be cramping but that’s just a lack of match minutes.
‘I feel like now my body has gotten through a full 90 now and a lot of games. It was my first double gameweek last week and cramped up at the very end but my body feels good now.
‘As a footballer you want to be playing, right? But coming back to pre-season, I didn’t have a lot of an off-season. I started running on the last day of the season so the whole of the off season was about building my fitness up to come back to pre-season fit enough and then pre-season came it hit me like a truck.
‘I was just getting through sessions, didn’t really have any issues with my ankle but it was just fitness wise I was just hanging in there. To now be back in the side is exactly where I want to be.’