Portsmouth await first £1m-plus sale since 2010 as pursuit of Matt Clarke and Jamal Lowe continues

What is assured, however, is that Pompey will be receiving a £1m-plus transfer fee for the first time in almost nine years.

The wrangling continues over Matt Clarke’s purported switch to Brighton in a deal which could be concluded for around £5m.

Meanwhile, the Blues are holding out for £3m in the matter of Jamal Lowe, with Millwall and Wigan having £1.5m bids knocked back.

It is Clarke, though, who remains a certain departure during this close season.

And irrespective of the precise sums collected for either, they can be relied on to represent Pompey’s biggest sales since August 2010.

It was on transfer deadline day under Steve Cotterill when Tommy Smith and Marc Wilson both departed in separate arrangements, each earning the Blues more than £1m.

Since then, no Pompey sale has registered as much – until potentially now.

Back at the start of the 2010-11 campaign, the club were still under the jurisdiction of administrator Andrew Andronikou, despite David Lampitt’s arrival as chief executive.

With player sales required, prized-asset Marc Wilson joined Stoke on the final day of the August 2010 transfer window.

The agreement involved around £1.5m bolstering Pompey’s coffers, in addition to Liam Lawrence and Dave Kitson arriving at Fratton Park in part exchange.

For Cotterill, it represented encouraging business, regardless of how Lawrence and Kitson would later fare in their new surroundings.

As for Wilson, he made 176 appearances, scoring once, during his time at Premier League Stoke.

Since the Irishman’s August 2016 departure from the Potteries, however, his career has become nomadic, with injuries largely restricting first-team outings.

On the same day as Wilson’s Pompey departure, Smith was offloaded to QPR, albeit not in a straightforward arrangement.

With the Football League receiving his paperwork minutes after the deadline, the winger instead joined the Loftus Road club on three separate one-month loan deals.

That then became permanent in January 2011, once the window had reopened, with a reported £1.5m sale kicking in, although it is likely the Blues received the money earlier.

Since August 2010, high-profile sales have included John Utaka (Montpellier), Joel Ward (Crystal Palace), Jason Pearce (Leeds), Jed Wallace (Wolves), Adam Webster (Ipswich) and Conor Chaplin (Coventry).

But none of their initial transfer fees, without add-ons, attracted in excess of £1m.

That will change this summer, however, as the multi-million pound pursuit of Clarke and Lowe continues.