Duncan Barkes

He played for the first part of...

Was it last season or this season?

I can't remember.

At centre-back, which is what he says is a position he can play in, as well as being a right-back.

And we brought him into the club with that knowledge.

And it was one of his many credentials that he brought.

And we now know that Connor Ogilvie, besides being, we say, one of the best left-backs in the Championship, surely, is also an extremely competent centre-back.

So we now have in that versatility all sorts of options for covering for positions where players are injured and we might not have a specialist right back.

And back in the good old days, if your right back was injured and your reserve right back was injured, you were, you know, not to put it mildly, screwed.

But what John Messina was working towards is a situation whereby he has at his disposal a bunch of players who can play in a number of positions, thus covering himself, or at least covering himself as best he can, against the injuries, the numerous injuries, the unacceptable level of injuries that are taking place and damaging the campaigns of so many sides, particularly in the Championship.

We still don't know why.

In the not-too-distant future, it might be obvious, but at the moment we don't know why, and therefore we don't know what to do about it to prevent it happening.

But what we can do is to cover for it, to have contingency for it, and it looks as though perhaps John Messina has come up with a scheme whereby Pompey may well pretty soon have contingency for it, which is having a bunch of players, perhaps a dozen out of the 25 or 30 in the squad, who can play in more than one position, possibly even three or four positions.

If that's the case, good thinking guys.

As Pompey ease themselves back into the routine of preparation for a looming Championship match, players and staff are sharply conscious that the next game comes on a Friday, not a Saturday, a piece of scheduling which effectively robs them of 24 hours preparation, and even the preparations that took place on Saturday and Sunday were subject to an hour lost through clocks going forward overnight on Sunday.

Some would say small matters, but when small matters pile up they become big matters.

Besides with Pompey's next fixture taking place on Friday, after that, with just two full days preparation time, namely the weekend of Saturday the 4th and Sunday the 5th, it's on to the six-pointer against Oxford, which kicks off at half-past 12 in the afternoon.

The first job on the list as the players assemble after a mini-break to recharge their batteries, is a health and fitness check on the players, especially those who are nursing everything from niggles to full-blown ailments.

Naturally Pompey'll be keeping news about those developments close to their chest, all eyes and ears are out for any snippets on Ebo Adams.

But coach John Massino is looking for good news on a number of his players.