The marquee Portsmouth flop catching eye after Fratton nightmare as former West Ham United and Wigan Athletic man bounces back
He joined from Wigan Athletic with hopes of high of repeating his League One goalscoring exploits, but his Fratton Park career was wrecked by injury. Now the former Republic of Ireland under-21 international is bouncing back.
He arrived with a marquee billing and established record for bringing League One goal threat to the table.
Yet Anthony Scully’s Pompey career was to be riddled with fitness problems across an ultimately underwhelming Fratton stay, which totalled just nine appearances without hitting the back of the net.
West Ham hopeful bouncing back at Fratton pain
A hernia issue on arriving at PO4 was the precursor to knee and ankle surgeries, with the winger never hitting the heights which saw him bag 17 and 15 goals for Lincoln City in successive seasons before a 2022 switch to Wigan Athletic in the Championship.
The affable former West Ham man’s stay at Fratton came to a close with his release last summer, following another blow when linking up with former Blues boss Danny Cowley at Colchester United on loan.
It was another ex-Pompey boss who offered Scully an olive branch, signing a 12-month deal with Michael Appleton’s Shrewsbury Town with the pair acquainted from their time at Sincil Bank.
Scully’s season followed a familiar pattern, however, at the campaign’s outset, after three initial starts and the same number of sub appearances. A groin injury led to another six-week gap between appearances as Shrewsbury toiled at the foot of League Two, collecting a single win from their opening 10 league games.
The Irishman’s absence led to an open and honest conversation between manager and player over where the 26-year-old’s career was headed, with Scully early career promise becoming a distant memory.
The talks certainly seemed to have the desired effect on the player, with the League One title winner starting Salop’s past four outings - contributing to an unbeaten spell over the period to put their early struggles to bed. That run was capped with Scully bagging his first goal for the club last weekend, an excellent drive from outside the box in a 2-2 draw with Oldham.
Subscribe to The Portsmouth News for just a fiver to unlock unlimited access to our exclusive content - including award-winning Pompey coverage.
Appleton’s ‘open and frank conversation’ with Scully
Now the hope for both Appleton and his player is they can see an extended run of games, and Scully return to the levels he’s shown he can reach.
Speaking to the Shropshire Star earlier this month, Appleton said: ‘It was one of those where injuries have been an issue for him for a couple of seasons now.
‘Prior to coming into the football club I had lots of conversations with him. I knew he'd been training for a while, but not at the games. Then he had a little bit of a setback with the injury.
‘I'm not going to go into too much detail with it, but we had an open and frank conversation about three weeks ago. I told him a few home truths because I felt I could do that. I've known him for the best part of four, maybe five years now, since I first took him into Lincoln as a young kid from West Ham. I tried to get him to remember what got him to the point where he was performing in the Championship.
‘So he took it on board exactly how I would expect him to because he's that type of lad. I'm pretty confident that, whether it's in the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months, we'll see the best version of Anthony Scully.’