Slammed shut!

For the next 37-days or so, at least, we now know exactly what Appy - more of less - has to work with squad wise.

This emergency loan window has slammed shut now with Pompey able to bring in a couple of loanees from West Brom.

Joe Mattock is someone that I know of, and someone that was thought of very highly for a good while when he came onto the scene with Leicester as a teenager.

This saw him represent England at various levels up to and including U21 level. At 21 this is a level he could still qualify for and some 'possible' regular 1st team football with us until January 2nd, at least, could help his chances of forcing his way back into Stuart Pearce's thoughts.

With that in mind surely the defender has plenty of reason to look to impress at Fratton, that should, in theory, benefit us right?

The second arrival from West Brom, George Thorne is not, I must totally confess, someone that I know anything about whatsoever!

Appy though speaks very highly of him, and if anyone knows what he can do he should, and by all accounts he is well thought of at West Brom too.

He is another that will be looking to stamp his mark at Fratton as this further enhances his chances of making a regular spot in a premier league West Brom side more of a realistic prospect.

In many ways I do think that Appy is right that our squad could do with some 'youth' about it and these two arrivals certainly bring that, but in Mattock's case he brings with him a fair bit of experience too despite his fairly young years.

The disappointment in doing this arguably is that we have looked elsewhere for this as opposed to using our own - the likes of Ryan Williams, Lewis Stockford, Lewis Tallack and Jed Wallace for example.

That said who is to say that they are not in Appy's thoughts as he has mentioned most, and others, by name in the past 24-hours as players that he 'likes'...

Something that is a little bit of a 'disappointment' about to day are the 'reports' that a move for a third player 'fell through' - who this was and/or why still is not known?

The 'apparent' loss of Abdul Razak is a blow though!

He is going back to Citeh, like I say this is a blow, although I cannot find anything 'official' from our end or Citeh's saying that this is actually happening - this was 'rumour' in a paper today so it is not 100% certain it will actually happen, though chances are it will?!

All that said though you would hardly expect us to be starting with both Razak and Thorne in midfield would you as the lack of experience, as much as anything, could leave us exposed - and given the seriously highly rated nature of Razak could you really see Citeh letting us keep him to warm our bench, he may as well do that on theirs if anywhere!

We now know what we have to work with, lets just hope that Appy can get the best out of them and get us climbing up the table - with Scum coming up we need to be going into this in a bit of form, Leicester (h), Coventry (h) and Burnley (a) are games that give us a chance of gaining some momentum so lets hope we can...

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