Portsmouth boss Danny Cowley admits he's having to hold back on-loan Manchester City goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu.

Cowley says Bazunu is being protected after feeling his quad in the warm-up of their recent friendly vs QPR that has kept him out of their first two pre-season games.

He told the Portsmouth News: "Gavin's doing handling, he can't do any kicking at the moment, but hopefully by the middle-to-the-end of the week he gets there. He just felt it in the warm-up to the QPR game, so we couldn't take any risk.

You've got to wrap them up in cotton wool at this stage, especially when they are new in the building and you're just getting to know their bodies.

"He's disrupted some fibres in his quad, it's very low level. It doesn't even classify as a grade one (tear), we are just being cautious with him.

"Gavin's doing all the handling, so we're still getting a lot of the goalkeeping work into him."