Portsmouth boss Danny Cowley makes ex-Sunderland and Millwall striker Aiden O’Brien contract admission

The forward arrived at the Blues on a short-term deal until the end of the season in January and has impressed highly, scoring four goals in his first 10 games.

Following the 1-1 draw against Bolton on Tuesday, the 28-year-old revealed his desire to extend his stay on the south coast beyond the current season.

Chief executive Andy Cullen has stated talks are underway with recruitment staff about contracts.

And Cowley revealed the former Millwall man is one he’d like to bring back for next season.

Pompey’s head coach told The News: ‘There’s a number of players that we would like to re-engage with and a number of those players do have options in their contracts which are in the clubs favour.

‘I suppose the nature of options are for obvious financial reasons so those contracts won’t be extended until they need to be.

‘The one or two that are out-of-contract then our hope is that the players we would like to re-engage with we will be able to find an agreement between the club and the player to get the contract signed.

‘Aiden brings an energy and enthusiasm and we’ve liked the way he looks after the ball at the top end of the pitch.

‘He protects it very well and you can play it into him and he is very reliable and as a consequence the other players are confident to make runs off of him.

‘Aiden is reliable and you only have to look at his goal on Tuesday night, the first part of it is his hold up and link play and his pass to Marcus Harness in the box and Marcus did really well to cut the ball back for Aiden to make another run to get a clean finish.’