Breaking: He's back - for now: Luckless Portsmouth man returns to Fratton Park after more injury woe
Anthony Scully is back at Fratton Park - for now.
Colchester have moved to end the scheduled season-long loan, with the luckless winger currently sidelined potentially until March by an ankle injury.
However, their boss Danny Cowley revealed he is ‘hoping’ Scully can still return to the League Two club this season.
Having undergone an ankle operation in November, the 25-year-old has been rehabbing at Colchester rather than the Blues.
However, things move quickly and today the Blues have announced his return to the south coast after Cowley opted to end the arrangement at the halfway point.
Although, according to the former Pompey head coach in the Colchester Gazette, there may be another twist in the tale.
He said: ‘Anthony has gone back to Portsmouth, which I think was the right thing for all parties really.
‘We’re hoping that Anthony might come back to us. He’s obviously had a stop-start period in his career. He’s a great kid who really wants to do well and a really, really good player.
‘We’ve been really appreciative of Portsmouth; we took him on deadline day and they were very generous with the agreement that we had with them.
‘We’ll see what this next couple of weeks look like and how close he’s going to be to getting back on the grass before we decide whether we take him back for the rest of the season.
‘The lines of communication between ourselves, Anthony and Portsmouth have been clear and I think everybody knows where they stand.
Unfortunately, he’s just had this issue with his ankle. He had some metalwork put in when he had the operation and that meant that he didn’t have much mobility in that ankle joint.
‘The surgeon highlighted that it should have come out a long time ago, so it’s been mis-managed somewhere along the line which is a shame for Anthony, for sure because it’s taken a lot of playing opportunities away from him.
‘We always knew that Anthony wouldn’t be back until mid-February, at the earliest and more realistically, the beginning of March.
‘He’s made really good progress in a short space of time.’
Scully’s time at Fratton Park has been ravaged by injuries, restricting him to just nine appearances.
Signed in June 2022 for an undisclosed fee from Wigan, he was declared surplus to requirements just 13 months later and omitted from the Blues’ pre-season friendly programme.