Bruce Faces Defender Crisis For Pompey Clash

Both Phil Bardsley and Kieran Richardson will automatically miss this Premier League fixture as they both picked up their fifth booking of the season against Fulham yesterday.

Anton Ferdinand will be waiting on news from a scan as he suffered a bad injury in his return to the starting eleven as Nevland brought him down in the first half.

John Mensah and George McCartney will face fitness tests throughout the week as they missed the Fulham defeat due to bad back and hamstring problems respectively.

This will give Bruce a massive problem as he looks for any comfort after their appauling display in the first half led to another away defeat and pile pressure on the Pompey game being at home.

Nyron Nosworthy came on to replace the injured Ferdinand and we may have to play Da Silva right back to solve that positional problem. Michael Turner will be fine to play in the middle but we may have to hope that McCartney gets fit by Saturday afternoon as we have very limited options on the left hand side of defence this season.

Whatever back four are selected on Saturday this home game has became very important as we need to bounce back from two straight away defeats and bring confidence back to the team.

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