Duncan Barkes

Some players need to be two footed.

The great Bobby Charlton said that the reason he was just as good with his left foot, he scored a lot of goals with his left foot, which was his natural foot, just as good with his left foot as he was with his right foot, which he used to score some of his most famous goals from 25, 30 yards, was because when he was a boy, he used to go out to a bomb site.

near where he lived in Manchester, and he had a knackered old ball, but he used to practice whacking it at a tumble-down wall as hard as he could with his wrong foot, night after night after night, and it paid off.

I suppose there's a message there for some of the youngsters coming through the academy, that Josh Murphy could be the best crosser of the ball in the world with his wrong foot.

Well, all I would say is that they haven't seen him in his last half a dozen or so trot outs for Pompey because he has not been turning heads.

If he has been turning heads, he's turned one or two heads away because he hasn't gone one on one that I can recall with anybody.

Maybe he has sort of thought about it and maybe had a tentative go at it.

But for whatever reason, he has not been taking his man on, which is one of the things that we look for in a wide community.

attacker, especially if they then get a cross in or a shot in as a result of taking on and beating their man.

It could be a confidence thing.

It certainly clearly isn't a skill thing or a speed thing.

He just needs to have it in his heart to take on a guy knowing that 18,000 people are going to go, oh.

If it doesn't quite work out, that can be the mental challenge.

But if he's got Real Madrid running around in his head, if he's aware of any conversations that are actually taking place about him with one of the world's biggest football names, that's unsettling.

He doesn't want to get injured if he's got a prospect of running out in the white shirt, albeit the white shirt of the Real Madrid reserves to begin with, or youth team even.

That's going to be a distraction.

That's going to be in his head for sure.

However, we now look at Yang in a slightly different light, don't we?

And if there is anything in this conversation, Pompey will be in the loop.

And we may well see him starting again on Saturday, as much as anything else, now on future reputation, which can happen.