Pompey sliter med å score mål. Colby Bishop kommer ikke til å spille noen kamper i 2024, men nyhetene fra Fratton Park denne uka er godt nytt.
NYHETER: Colby Bishop har vært Pompeys toppscorer begge de to sesongene han har spilt for klubben etter overgangen fra Accrington Stanley. Han har også vært ønsket av en rekke Championship-klubber i løpet av denne perioden.
Foran comebacksesongen i Championship, var Bishop mannen Pompey og Pompey-fansen satte sin lit til skulle ordne scoringer også denne sesongen. Det var derfor en stor nedtur da nyheten kom i starten på august at det var oppdaget en hjertefeil hos 27-åringen.
Bishop måtte opereres og han ble ikke registrert for spill for Pompey da de leverte inn sin spillertropp for perioden fram til januar 2025. Samtidig var hovedtrener John Mousinho klar på at det ikke var mulig å si noe om når han kunne være tilbake ettersom de hadde lite erfaring med denne typen problematikk.
Nå kommer Pompeys daglige leder, Andy Cullen, med en oppdatering gjennom lokalavisen The News. Han forteller at det er realistisk å tro at Bishop spiller en rekke kamper for Pompey denne sesongen.
SE OGSÅ: Colby Bishops spillerprofil
Cullens kommentarer til The News
«Colby is doing really well. Certainly Colby is positive that he will play this season – and that he will play for a number of games this season. Which is great.
We just have to manage it as best as we possibly can because there have been so few surgeries of this kind, fewer than 1,000 people, and a small proportion of those have been professional athletes.
We have given him the best possible surgeon to look at it and to operate on him, with the best possible aftercare. He is making good progress and we all hope to see him in action this season.
Colby is looking really positively at what was a very, very difficult situation. Naturally he wants to make a return as soon as he possibly can, we just have to make sure we manage it properly, using the correct advice from medical professionals. It’s not a hamstring – grade one, grade two, grade three – it’s not an ACL with 9-10 months. There is no set time he will be out for, although we knew it was highly unlikely he’d be available prior to Christmas.
Given the experiences of people in similar situations, with each surgery very different as well, this is a really, really serious piece of surgery, open-heart surgery, let’s make no bones about it. But we have to put the players’ health first in all of this.
We have a responsibility as a football club to all our staff – and full marks to everybody for making sure we went through all the cardio scans at the start of the season. We will continue to do that, anybody coming into the football club, anybody within the football club, we will ensure they continue to have those done regularly so we’re on top of it. It’s really, really important.»
Colby Bishop har vært Pompeys toppscorer de to siste sesongene.