Frustrated Hart vows to step up player hunt
Paul Hart has spoken of his frustration as his Pompey player search continues to draw blanks.
The Blues boss was returning from Guimaraes today ready to step up his pursuit of new talent.
Aaron Mokoena and Steve Finnan are the sole new arrivals at Fratton Park so far this summer – both free agents.
Yet the Blues look to have missed out on Nikola Kalinic, while the chase for Amr Zaki on a season-long loan deal is dragging on.
Pompey are trying to come to an agreement with Zaki's club El Zamalek, who wanted 2m for the loan agreement, while the Blues have offered 500,000.
Other strikers such as Mark Viduka remain in the frame, with the Australian set to sign this week.
In the meantime, the Blues endured a dreadful time in the City of Guimaraes trophy over the weekend.
A 2-0 defeat against Vitoria Guimaraes was followed by a 4-0 thumping by Benfica on Saturday night.
Those losses have highlighted the necessity of bringing a number of quality new recruits to Fratton Park.
With less than two weeks to go until the visit of Fulham for the Premier League opener, time is running out.
Chief executive Peter Storrie stayed behind at Fratton Park to thrash out potential transfer deals while Pompey spent the past six days in Portugal.
Now Hart's returning to England to join him – and the Blues boss believes progress can be made this coming week.
He said: 'It was always going to be a difficult tour given the present situation.
'The fact is we have hardly signed a player yet, while there were three triallists out there against Benfica. But I still thought the players worked tremendously hard.
'We've got targets and we are trying to close those down. Hopefully as soon as we get back perhaps we can have some updates.
'I've been working (on transfers) while in Portugal, but it's much easier when you're actually there in England and I'm hoping one or two things may happen this week.
'We haven't got many strikers. We are looking at other players but obviously strikers are important.'
Pompey now have a friendly against Rangers remaining before the Premier League campaign kicks off on August 15.
Despite just one pre-season win from five games, however, Hart has been pleased with the make-up of the friendly programme.
He added: 'We've spent a lot of time in England this year, whereas we've been abroad for the past two summers all over the world.
'You can question the fitness that we get from that so we've tried to stay local, stay around and get more core stability and hopefully we will benefit from that.
'We've also got our fitness work in, Benfica were put under severe pressure all over the pitch so we hope we benefited from that.'
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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