Duncan Barkes

However his fortunes changed dramatically when Jack Wilshere took charge in October.

After starting in Wilshere's first game against Mansfield, the former Halifax man has found opportunities hard to come by, playing just 110 minutes of league football since.

The writing was on the wall when Ali was left out of the matchday squad for the fifth straight game during Saturday's 2-1 win over Stevenage.

The likes of Gideon Codua and Cohen Brummel were preferred, Shaden Morris has seen more action recently, and the arrival of Manchester City youngster Emilio Lawrence on loan last week seems to have pushed Ali further down the pecking order.

Now Football League World is reporting that a deal is close for him to join a Pompeyside desperate for reinforcements.

John Messinao's team sits 21st in the table, just a point above the drop zone, and has been hit by a string of bad luck.

Tottenham recalled winger Yang Min-hyuk only to send him to Coventry, while Callum Lang, Josh Murphy, and Franco Ume are all injured, and Mark Kuznowski is out for the season.

The report states.

Portsmouth are making moves to bolster their options in the final third, and they are in advanced talks to sign Luton Town attacker Malenik Ali on loan for the remainder of the campaign.

Wilshire himself admitted last week that a loan move was likely.

I think Millie has to play football, Millie definitely has to play football, he said.

He's not a young player who can dip in and dip out, he's at an age where he probably feels like this is his time.

I also understand that he needs to play, so we could be open to that, yes.

There was always a possibility of Minhoc going back to Spurs and we heard about the possibility of it a couple of weeks ago.

So it wasn't a huge surprise and is something we were prepared for.

They just wanted more minutes so that's fine.

We haven't given him a huge amount of minutes recently and we live with that.

When you strip everything back, three goals, a number of starts, a number of appearances, I was pretty positive about the way things were going for him.

There's obviously an expectation for him from his own perspective to come in and play, but, as a young lad in a side which isn't firing at the top of the league, I thought he had a really really good impact.

In that short time he had a good spell at Pompey.