Guy facing key keeper decision

John Sullivan can't believe his luck at York Picture: Joe Pepler

And that could well throw the door open for a new goalkeeping rival to join Pompey.

Sullivan followed up an impressive Fleetwood showing with a highly-disappointing performance in the York humiliation on Saturday.

He failed to hold on to Josh Carson’s third-minute free-kick, which allowed the alert Wes Fletcher to pounce and force the ball home.

Then four minutes after Jed Wallace had pulled Pompey level, he dropped a cross from a corner to allow Lewis Montrose to net from close range.

Watching from the substitutes’ bench at Bootham Crescent was fellow keeper Phil Smith – himself left out following a costly clanger at Mansfield last month.

It puts Sullivan’s place under severe pressure and Whittingham is weighing up his next goalkeeping move.

He said: ‘For the first goal, John has obviously parried the ball and it has fallen to one of their players.

‘But you can’t rely on people to do the right things all the time – you have got to cover things and we didn’t do that.

‘I was a striker in my day and you always gamble on the rebound and we didn’t do that. You are relying on people to do their jobs and you should never do that, you have got to make sure you cover in case anything happens.

‘For the second one, John has dropped that and, afterwards, came in and apologised. That shouldn’t happen.

‘Whether he plays next week is not a decision you make straight away.

‘That goal allowed them to take the lead again but it isn’t just down to that one goal – we were poor before that and we were poor after that.

‘I’m asked every week about loans and we are continuing to look.

‘We also have Phil, who has been fantastic in training.’

Meanwhile, Whittingham and his staff will today be taking the players through a video nasty of York.

Pompey’s boss added: ‘We will sit down and look at the game and, no doubt, have a meeting to discuss why we were like we were.

‘It’s a standard meeting and the majority of times on a Monday we have either a group or do it individually. This will be a group, for sure.’