Every Portsmouth word: Full transcription of Michael Eisner's wide-ranging video to the Fratton faithful

Michael Eisner:

‘So welcome to everybody, welcome to the Victory Suite, called now the Victory Suite rather than the Victory Lounge.

‘Maybe today is a non-Victory Suite, but anyway, I’m with Eric and am glad to see you all. I’m excited about where you are sitting and I think when the lights go on outside the Victory Suite, that facility which everybody has been wanting to upgrade will be there.

‘I guess it’s kind of a difficult time to talk about progress in the non-football area, but we have to deal with what we have to deal with. It has been an upsetting beginning of the Championship season, I think the success of last season is not forgotten and we have to deal with going forward - and we will.

‘Let me just say at the start, we are not going to be relegated. Period.

‘You know, there really are no excuses. We did meet six of the seven top teams in the Championship to start off with and, if that was it, we could use that as an excuse, but then we met teams that were down where we are and we still couldn’t put it together. But our strategy is our strategy and I think we will prevail.

‘There have been some things here that are obviously upsetting. Colby Bishop having a heart issue, having an operation is sad news for us and for him. On the other hand, the good news about that is our medical team did heart scans for all of our players and, through that heart scan, we discovered this infection in Colby’s heart and he had the operation.

‘I understand he is 100 per cent, he will be back. The bad news is we have lost our star player for the first third of the season, or maybe half the season, but the fact is we may have prolonged his life.

‘We will let Eric review a little bit about the past season and talk at least from the owners’ point of view about our growing strategy. We will obviously be tweaking it somewhat going into the transfer window.

‘I will say that we do have a conversation with Rich, John, Andrew and the whole team easily once a month, so we are informed.

Eric Eisner:

‘Last year was such an amazing year, full of winning, we only lost five games and we knew that, coming into this season, it would be a lot more losing. Obviously we didn’t expect the extent we are at right now.

‘We are going to stick with our strategy, our football strategy has to remain consistent over the long-term, which is to recruit younger players, develop them internally for ourselves and then either sell them on or use them to rise in the Championship and hopefully get to the Premier League one day.

‘Using the example of (Abu) Kamara, if he was our player instead of Norwich’s. Everybody did a great job developing him and then all of a sudden the £4.5m goes to Norwich instead of us, so that is our long-term strategy.

‘It will take 3-5 years to see how the players develop, it’s not an overnight because the players take some time to develop, but again we are going to stick to our guns and develop players for ourselves.

‘As I say that, because of our poor start in January, we may have to adopt a little bit of a different strategy relying on loan players, but we are only going to bring in players that can affect the team right away, that can get us up the table and out. If we are in the position of a Great Escape, we would happily do that.

‘That said, it is still very early in the season and it’s starting to get a little bit longer in there, but we need to stick to our guns, continue with our strategy, rely on our management that we have faith in, develop our players and continue.

‘I think over the long term that is a great strategy, we do not want to be a yo-yo club, I will say that, we are not going to get relegated.

‘We are going to find ourselves in January in a position where we will make the moves. Right now it has been a really tough go, obviously it was a tough game against Plymouth we seem to be able to put one half together and not two halves together.

‘That said, developing our own talent internally and then using them to sell on or (for the club) to use to climb the ladder is the goal and will remain the goal. Sustainable football is the magic word.

‘The fans have been amazing, you are always there cheering louder than any other team. Every time I see the other teams talking about our fans, they say we have the best fans in the league - and we do.

‘Hopefully everyone will stick with us and we will get out of this together.’

Michael said:

‘The PST and the fans in general are amazing. When we were looking for investment in UK football, it was the fans that convinced us this was the right place to be, so we were happy.

‘I don’t think I want to spend much time on the past, but we do think Fratton Park is now up to speed, it is now safe, the Milton End was built with a top architect, the gantry - which is fantastic - work based on Archibald Leitch's architecture from the early part of the last century.

‘All of the things we try to do with food and merchandise, land acquisitions and owning a training ground that we are improving consistently, since the team had never before owned a training ground.

‘We are not up to Southampton yet, we are not up to Bournemouth or Bristol (City), but we are moving in a direction which was non-existent before.

‘Now all of that is not going to make our fans that happy today because it’s all what happens on the pitch. We have always concentrated on the pitch, but now that all the infrastructure is pretty much, I wouldn’t say done, but quite a way towards being done. The pitch has always been our number one concern and still is.

Eric:

‘We have always said that we will build the stage first and then hire the actors, so I think we are in that process where we’ve built the stage and are now in the process of building the acting team.

Michael:

‘We were very fortunate to come in with Mark Catlin as the CEO and now we have Andrew who is a fantastic CEO. We are thrilled with Tony (Brown) in the financial area and we are particularly thrilled with John and Rich.

‘You may not think that today because we have lost more than a few games in a row, but we have made long-term arrangements with them, we have great faith in them, they will grow with the team, so we are behind them.

‘That said, I am always optimistic. I am emboldened by the fact we have work to do to not be relegated and now we are going to turn it over to Andrew and the team to put more details and answer all your questions, take your criticism, but stay with us. Thank you and have a good meeting.

‘Play Up Pompey.’