'I'd have ripped your arm off': Portsmouth chief's delight with transfer window business designed to seal promotion

Rich Hughes surveyed Pompey’s January window dealings and insisted: ‘I’d have ripped your arm off if you had offered me those players at the start of it’.

The League One leaders added five new players to their ranks last month, although the Blues’ sporting director believes Josh Martin should be considered a sixth.

Still, with three transfer fees paid out and one loanee, their recruitment has undoubtedly been impressive on paper.

Indeed Callum Lang has made an instant impression, with two goals and two assists from his opening two matches.

And Hughes is delighted with the calibre of players his recruitment team - funded by Michael Eisner - were also to attract to Fratton Park during a pivotal transfer window.

He told The News: ‘We worked on a strategy, wanting to make the group stronger coming out of the window than we went into it - and adding to the departments where we felt was needed.

‘We’ve added quality, we’ve added energy, we’ve added enthusiasm, we’ve added some more depth in areas we didn’t have before. You can only judge the success of a window at the end of the season, but we are really pleased with the work we’ve done.

‘Going into January, if you had offered me those players as the six we would sign, I’d have ripped your arm off.

‘We identified certain needs ahead of the window. The more obvious ones was some attacking input, we were lacking a little with Tino injured and out for a while, while had to get a Regan Poole replacement.

‘We got a good situation with Matt Macey popping up, so we strengthened the goalie department, then were able to react accordingly to Alex Robertson getting injured to bring in Myles Peart-Harris.

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‘Finally, we had an opportunity to get ahead of the market and bring in Owen Moxon, so did that. So I would suggest we are in a stronger position than when we moved into the window.’

Saturday’s impressive 4-1 victory over Northampton saw four of the new boys feature - Lang, Peart-Harris, Tom McIntyre and Moxon.

And while all but Peart-Harris arrived in the final four days of the window, Pompey had been trailing them long before.

Hughes added: ‘We share the frustration of supporters about getting signings done quickly. Somebody pointed out that there were six games in January and they are absolutely right, we know it.

‘I would like to think that myself, John (Mousinho) and Andy (Cullen) spoke at length publicly about all the different mechanisms that can affect and impact the January transfer window - and I think people probably saw that come to light with the way the window panned out.

‘It was one of the lowest spends for several years from the Premier League - and there’s a knock-on impact. If clubs aren’t spending money to buy players, they may be slightly reluctant to let them out.

‘It was all about timing, situation and circumstance. People think it’s shopping in the last week of the window, but they were all players we had identified. And we’re really, really pleased with how it panned out.’