Richie Barker says he had no qualms about pitching Michael Drennan in for his home Pompey debut against Accrington.
The Irish striker impressed on his first Fratton start and made a perfect partner for matchwinner Jake Jervis.
Barker told The News: 'I decided to go with Michael after he scored at the weekend. I also thought he would thrive in the atmosphere of playing on a Tuesday night at Fratton Park with a good home support behind us.
‘He deserved his chance and stuck at his task extremely well for somebody who has barely played at this level and probably the biggest crowd he has ever played in front of. Sometimes you take people from development football and you think he must just be pass, pass, pass, pass, pass — but Michael certainly didn’t do that.
‘He is a strong little so-and-so, he is really physically developed, we have been watching him for six months now and we’ve seen him physically develop. He broke his foot in pre-season when we were looking to take him to Crawley and he has certainly physically developed over the last six months and doesn’t hang about.
‘In the end he ended up cutting the back of his head and came off, their lad also cut the front of his head in the incident. We were already discussing whether we were going to bring him off and put Thery (Racon) on because they were playing with a man in the hole and we felt we needed somebody to negate that, so the decision was made for us.’
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