News has broken this morning that Anthony Scully is available for transfer, after being told he has no future at Portsmouth, following their promotion.
Scully was desperately unlucky on the south coast, hit by numerous injury troubles last season that restricted him to just a handful of matches. He has featured once in pre-season, but Pompey have now made the decision to allow him to leave.
He wasn’t part of the 19-man squad that drew 1-1 with MK Dons last night, and manager John Mousinho has admitted there is no longer a future for Scully at Fratton Park.
“For us at the football club, it is probably the right time,’ said the former Oxford man, whose side broke our hearts on the final day of the season. “We’ve had a look at everything pre-season and maybe it’s a good time for both parties to shake hands and part ways if we can find something which is mutually agreeable. He’s still training with us, just didn’t travel with us. He wasn’t going to get the minutes, so there was no point in him travelling.”
Shortly after joining, Scully tore the meniscus in his left knee, and while that wasn’t the end of his time on the South Coast, it did effectively derail his Portsmouth career. He returned in December after four months on the sidelines but saw his campaign end prematurely through more niggly injuries. Even pre-season has been a struggle for him, as he missed games with a bug and was only featured against Gosport.
Scully is one of my favourite players from the last couple of seasons, and I even featured him in my ‘favourite Imps’ series. I was excited when he arrived, as I’ve always felt former West Ham youngsters have something about them, and he proved that by bagging a couple of goals at the tail end of 2019/20. In 2020/21, I could never quite see how he fitted in Michael Appleton’s side, but he did, and he scored regularly.
He was one of the only real bright sparks in the 2021/22 season, and when he earned a move to then-Championship Wigan on deadline day in August 2022, it seemed like good business, and it felt like he might be able to kick on. However, since leaving City, he hasn’t settled. He played just four times for Wigan and six times in the league for Portsmouth.
He’s now sure to be a target for a number of the Imps League One rivals. I always suggest Cambridge as a good destination, but I could see him playing for them, or perhaps someone like Bristol Rovers, Orient, maybe even Barnsley. He’s got plenty to offer League One, and while there’s no suggestion he would fit into Skubala’s formation, I have zero doubt we’ll see him plying his trade in League One last season.
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