Portsmouth manager Danny Cowley is convinced Matt Ritchie will ‘finish his career’ at Fratton Park with the Premier League veteran looking set to leave Newcastle United in the near future, speaking to The News.
Alongside Ciaran Clark, Isaac Hayden and co, long-serving winger Ritchie appears to have been left behind by Newcastle’s remarkable transformation from relegation dodgers to Champions League challengers; playing just one minute of top-flight football all season under Eddie Howe.
According to Dean Jones, the popular winger is free to leave in the New Year. There has been the odd enquiry from the MLS, though the player himself has spoken openly in the recent past about his desire to re-join a Portsmouth side who handed him his senior debut in 2009/10.
Pompey boss Cowley would relish the prospect of working with Ritchie on the South Coast. Time will tell, however, if the 33-year-old would be willing to take a massive pay cut, while swapping the top-flight for the third-tier.
Newcastle United will let Matt Ritchie go but could he really return to Portsmouth?
“Well, we’d love to have Matt Ritchie,” Cowley smiles. “I’m not sure we’d be able to cover his wages coming to Portsmouth, though! That said, he loves the club and he’s been to a couple of games with his boys.
“We’d like him. I think our XG would go up then and there will be no moaning about set-pieces!
“I do think he will finish his career at Portsmouth.”
Ritchie, who cost Newcastle a cool £12 million when arriving from AFC Bournemouth at the beginning of the Rafa Benitez era, is entering the final few months of his contract at St James’ Park.
Newcastle’s interest in exciting, up-and-coming forwards like Moussa Diaby of Bayer Leverkusen and Shakhtar Donetsk speedster Mykhaylo Mudryk promises to push the already out-of-favour Ritchie even further down Howe’s pecking order.
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