Appleton's delight at budget restructure

Trevor Birch has given the Blues boss the go-ahead to start signing players on monthly deals.

Meanwhile, Reading increased their financial help to enable Mikkel Andersen to today complete the loan move which was set to be scrapped over wages.

Appleton said: ‘The budget was a bit of an issue the other day but with Reading’s help we found a way round of getting to what we needed to bring Mikkel in.

‘I said to Trevor “do me a favour, discard bonuses, NI, all those things you do in a normal budget and just tell me exactly what I can spend gross figure per week and I’ll get on with the rest by it”.

‘So I have gone out and done the best I can so far and will make sure we will be very, very competitive tomorrow against Bournemouth.

‘It’s about simplifying it really. Instead of asking Trevor what kind of budget I can work with if we haven’t got an owner at this present time I just said “tell me exactly what we can do on a weekly basis”.

‘It’s a simple way of doing it for me.’

n Meanwhile, it was confirmed yesterday Pompey will not start life in League One with a points deduction.

Ten points will, though, be knocked off when the club exits administration.