Niche Cache.
Cool, lock him in for a Championship season, or playing for the U21s now and again.
Portsmouth were able to get the Luke Brooke-Smith transfer done just in time to sneak him into the starting line-up for their last preseason match – where they hosted Bundesliga 2 side SV Darmstadt (who themselves had a new attacking signing on board in Lee Ho-jae, a 25yo South Korean international who lived for several years during his childhood in Aotearoa after his dad, Lee Ki-hyung, signed with Auckland City – Lee Ho-jae was an Onehunga Sports junior back in the day).
The fact that Brooke-Smith started was down to injuries in the squad around him. That and also they probably wanted to have a decent look at him before the competitive games begin. Nothing to overreact to there... but don’t fall into the trap of anticipating a loan move. That was never on the cards for a project player like this – if you’ve bought him to develop, you want him on your training pitch with your coaches competing with your best players. The benefit of LBS moving over so early is that there’s no harm in sitting on the bench most weeks as an 18-year-old. He’ll get opportunities as and when he earns them (and with his physical profile and talent he could very well surprise a few folks with how much he does). But in case you need extra convincing, here’s his coach outright stating: “we aren’t looking to loan him out”...
John Mousinho:
“We played Luke on Saturday because we’ve been short of wide players considering where we are with injuries at the moment and we wanted to bring him in. Ultimately, he’s a player who we think can affect the first-team, it’s much more of a development project as well. Luke has started a handful of games in the A-League and only just turned 18. As you can probably imagine, he’s had a busy summer with a lot of speculation around the transfer, not just for us but there were other clubs involved as well. So he’s not been at it in terms of the levels of fitness and levels of training which maybe some of the players have, but I thought he did well against Darmstadt for his first time out in a Pompey shirt against good opposition. We aren’t looking to loan him out. We brought him in to be a development project, but also someone who we think can affect the squad. He's also our only fit left winger at the moment. If Luke’s good enough to play, he'll play. Probably the way I would envisage it this season is he’ll have an impact off the bench, but be around the first-team because I think he has the attributes to affect the Championship this year.”
Helps that he plays in a position where substitutions are common and you can still make a big impact in small windows. Helps that staying in town will make it easier for him and his family to get settled. Helps that Portsmouth would probably be happy with a mid-table finish which gives them some week-to-week margin for error. This is a great spot for him.
