Blackburn Rovers forward George Hirst has pointed towards his slow start at Portsmouth as a potential reason for optimism for the rest of this season as he looks to improve on an underwhelming first half of the 2022/23 campaign at Ewood Park, speaking to his loan side's media team.

The striker joined Pompey last summer on a season-long loan deal but failed to get on the scoresheet in the league for the south-coast side until the latter stages of November, then going on to record 13 league goals in total for Danny Cowley's men last term.

Also registering three assists in the process, his temporary spell was labelled as a major success and with this, he took a step up to the Championship with Blackburn on another temporary spell away from Leicester City.

Failing to score in any of his eight league appearances for Jon Dahl Tomasson's men this term though, there's a huge amount of pressure on him to produce for the Lancashire side in their quest to win promotion back to the top flight.

And he may be in danger of being left out completely by Tomasson for the remainder of his loan spell if he fails to impress in training and in a match situation.

But Hirst is hopeful of turning things around following a slow start with Pompey.

He said: "I look back on last season at Portsmouth as an unbelievable season because I ended up with quite a lot of goals, but it didn’t quite start off that way.

"It’s more about how you finish than how you start, even though I’d love to be on 10 or 15 goals already, which is what I was hoping for.

"It’s not worked out that way and it’s about continuing to keep my head down, working hard, continuing speaking to the gaffer and then I’ll hopefully get back in amongst the goals soon."

The Verdict:

The 23-year-old has shown during this World Cup break that he's capable of getting on the scoresheet - and his lack of goals so far may be a mental issue for the Leicester man.

McBurnie had a mental block last season and during the early stages of this term before scoring against Luton Town in August - and he hasn't looked back since then with nine league goals to his name now.

That could potentially boost Hirst's confidence as he looks to get himself in and amongst the goals, with this season potentially being a vital one for his career.

At 23, he needs to start thinking about the possibility of sealing a permanent move away from the King Power Stadium and it's currently unclear which division he would end up in if he did seal a switch away from the East Midlands on a longer-term basis.

If he can impress this term, he could potentially earn another second-tier move and that will make it less of a jump for him to move back up to the top level if he fulfils his potential and gets there.

A third-tier transfer in the summer would feel like a step back considering he joined Pompey back in 2021 and would have hoped to move to a higher division.