Portsmouth dealt bitter injury blow as Derby County ‘set to lose’ key star

Portsmouth continued their solid start to the season on Tuesday night with a win over Exeter City.

Colby Bishop ensured Pompey remained unbeaten after three games, winning two and drawing the other. It’s been a start Portsmouth will be pleased about, with only three teams managing better records in League One so far. Attention now turns to Cheltenham Town this weekend, and in the meantime, work will continue on new signings up and down the third tier.

Here we round up all the latest news surrounding Portsmouth and their League One rivals.

Lowery blow

Portsmouth star Tom Lowery has been ruled out for months ahead of surgery on Wednesday.

“It’s sort of what we expected - Tom is due for surgery on Thursday,” Pompey boss Mousinho confirmed after Tuesday night’s win.

“It’s a meniscus injury and it’s going to be anywhere from three to five months unfortunately - because they don’t know what it will be until they actually get in there. It’s a real shame for Tom. He’s gutted but I think he was half expecting the news. It’s a real long-termer and real unfortunate.”

Bird interest

Derby County look set to lose a key midfielder.

According to Hull Live, Derby have already rejected two bids from Hull for midfielder Max Bird, but the Tigers are still said to be ‘confident’ of securing a deal. Bird came through the Rams academy, and while he stuck around for a year, he was always expected to move on if Derby didn’t secure promotion back to the Championship at the first attempt.

Bird is still only 22 years of age, and he now looks set to move back to the second tier after Rams boss Paul Warne admitted that players have had their ‘heads’ turned by other clubs across the course of the summer.