'Hopefully he’ll be able to’ - Portsmouth provide important update on midfielder who takes Blues' injury list up to 10 ahead of League One title race with Derby and Bolton

Pompey remain hopeful of having midfielder Tom Lowery back before the end of the season.

The Blues confirmed on Friday that the 26-year-old suffered a grade two hamstring tear in the first-half of Tuesday night’s 3-1 win against Cambridge United at Fratton Park - an injury that rules him out of the immediate future.

A visit to a specialist has been pencilled in for next Wednesday - a meeting that will help Pompey fully determine a timeframe for his return. 

Until then, Pompey head coach John Mousinho wants to avoid any speculation regarding a potential comeback date. Although, speaking to The News ahead of Reading’s visit to Fratton Park - a game Lowery will definitely miss - he was hopeful the midfielder would still have a part to play in the latter part of the Blues’ pursuit of Championship football.

When asked for an update on Lowery’s injury, Mousinho said: ‘So we’ve had the results of Tom’s hamstring scan - he’s got a grade two tear and the reason why we’re going to reserve on a time scale at the moment is because Tom is going to see a specialist on Wednesday.

‘The issue with Tom at the moment is the location of the tear rather than the severity of the tear itself, so we want to make sure that we’re careful with that. Once we’ve spoken to the specialist on Wednesday, we’ll have much more of an update and I think that will be after the Charlton game (Saturday, February 24) before we know too much more.

‘Hopefully he will (be back before the end of the season). Certainly, the immediate prognosis for us is he came in the next day, he was walking, he had his hamstring strapped up but he wasn’t in a huge amount of discomfort. He wasn’t on crutches or anything like that, so hopefully he’ll be able to’.

Lowery only returned to first-team action at the start of January following surgery on a knee injury suffered on the opening day of the season against Bristol Rovers. The midfielder, who is contracted to the Blues until the summer of 2025, had started six games in a row for Pompey before limping off in the 35th minute against the U’s.

In the aftermath of that game, Mousinho admitted he made a mistake in selecting the former Crewe man against Cambridge, taking full responsibility for the team’s latest injury.

At present, Pompey have nine senior players ruled out of action - including Regan Poole, Alex Robertson, Joe Morrell, Terry Devlin and Tom McIntyre, who are all out for the remainder of the season. The Blues are awaiting Zak Swanson, Ben Stevenson and Tino Anjorin to make full recoveries from injury so that they can play their part in the team’s League One run-in.