Michael Eisner throws down clear on-pitch target for Portsmouth this season

And the Blues chairman is confident boss John Mousinho shares his determination to finally get out of League One.

The American billionaire made his first visit to Fratton Park since October to take in the 1-1 opening-day draw with Bristol Rovers.

Eisner took the opportunity to underline his ambition and what constitutes success in his eyes, with fans demanding Championship football at the seventh attempt.

The Pompey owner said: ‘My ambition (for Pompey) is for the next 20 years, but my immediate ambition is for promotion - to either be at the top or in the play-offs.

‘You can’t predict absolutely, this is not math. It’s about people, how they perform, lack of injuries and all that.

‘So yes success here is getting promoted, but there are 30 other successes here. A lot of that is backstage, a lot of that in management, a lot of that how you organise the transfer window and go early (for signings). I think that is a big success this year in going early and having our players as opposed to loan players.

‘That’s all success and you manage success one activity at a time, but for the fans they don’t see all that and they shouldn’t see that. It should be hidden and magic.

‘You should magic 11 people on the pitch, they win, keep winning and get promoted. That would obviously be a nice end to a magical prelude.’

Eisner believes his own desire to go up this team is echoed by Mousinho, after a week where there was plenty of talk about ambition at Pompey.

The Blues head coach drew some criticism for a response to a question over whether a lack of promotion equates to failure, with a focus on one part of his answer.

Eisner added: ‘To John more than anybody success would be getting promoted.

‘Not being promoted doesn’t mean you fail, it means you get promoted the next year or work harder in the next transfer window, you got unlucky or unlucky or maybe Ronan Curtis got hurt at exactly the wrong time.

‘You can judge success, but failure is a completely different situation.

‘You never have success without failure, by the way. You don’t punish people for failure, that is the way to destroy your organisation.

‘You try to avoid failure and get little failures here and there, but there is no failure at Pompey right now and it wouldn’t be a failure if we didn’t get promoted - but it would be a big success if we do get promoted.’