‘Not come out of my comfort zone for this’: Former Liverpool and Preston North End man’s no-nonsense message after Portsmouth failure

And he called for the Blues to put the foundations in place this summer to mount a serious attack at reaching the Championship next term.

Hopes of reaching the play-offs are all but dead after four draws on the bounce, leaving Pompey facing a SEVENTH season in League One. That fact could be mathematically confirmed against Accrington on Saturday, with dropped points meaning it’s been an opportunity missed by John Mousinho’s side.

That’s a source of immense frustration for Raffery, who stepped down from the Championship to mount a bid for success after his summer arrival from Preston.

The Scouser has experienced one promotion in his career when reaching League One with Rochdale in 2014. Raftery made the move to the other side of the country to commit to earning more success - with the 29-year-old not prepared to accept mediocrity.

He said: ‘I’m under contract for another year, so I’ll probably be back here next season.

‘Basically, we need to try to push on and get promoted now. I’ve not come this far out of my way and this far out of my comfort zone for this.

‘I’m not just here to play games in League One for another year, I want to actually achieve something – I put pressure on myself to achieve something.

‘I’ve had one promotion in my career and the year we had was absolutely brilliant. A club like this should be achieving more than it has been and doing things like that.’

With 13 players out of contract, a fair amount of recruitment work lies ahead for Pompey this summer, though there is a decent spine of the team also tied down next term. Rafferty knows Mousinho needs backing in the transfer market and feels the right conditions have to be in place for Pompey to succeed.

He added: ‘There’s a good few players out of contract, but there’s a good spine of the team here, but we’re going to have to get a good amount of players in as well.

‘There’s a good spine, but it probably sounds like a broken record to the fans saying: “next season we’ll go at it”.

‘As a Liverpool fan, we always said the same: “next season will be our season and we’ll win the league”. It didn’t happen for a number of years, but when it did it was incredible.

‘We don’t want to sound like broken records, so we need everything to be right to make a serious challenge. That’s whether it’s players or stuff day to day, we need everything to be right, done properly and professionally to mount a proper challenge.’