Danny Cowley's triallist pledge as Portsmouth seek to avoid repeat of 2021 pre-season player chaos

Although the Blues boss remains open to casting his eye over the occasional unattached player during the next pre-season.

Upon being installed as permanent head coach in May 2021, Cowley overhauled the Fratton Park squad he inherited from Kenny Jackett.

That included the release of 10 players whose contracts expired, while James Bolton was allowed to join Plymouth for an undisclosed settlement.

As a consequence, a procession of triallists were used to bolster training sessions and pre-season friendlies, with Cowley admitting sometimes 10 were involved in a session.

But he doesn’t anticipate that recurring when the squad enters pre-season training this June.

He told The News: ‘I think it will be a busy summer in term of recruitment.

‘Last summer was too busy, so we have to find more continuity than that. Whether we like it or not, this is the nature of a transitional period.

‘I hope there won’t be that many triallists, I don’t anticipate it. I have never known anything like the summer, it was incredible and challenging.

‘We were very short of players, we came into pre-season with just 11 of them, so we want to try to do our business early this year.

‘I don’t think you never say never in terms of bringing in triallists, we are always open-minded.

‘If there’s the chance to look at a player with your own eyes, you can bring them into your environment, which is always good to do – but not in the numbers that we did last season.

‘Sometimes we had as many as 10 at a time, just so we could fill pre-season fixtures without injuring our own players.’

Among last season’s triallists were Sam Habergham, Corey Addai, Ryan Leak, Madger Gomes, Jake Hesketh, Layton Ndukwu, Akin Odimayo and Brandon Mason.

Although Gassan Ahadme, Jayden Reid and Jay Mingi did earn deals, albeit with the former on loan from Norwich.