Portsmouth boss desperate to avoid repeat of summer scenario as he makes transfer confession

The Blues boss admitted he was forced into making ‘short-term decisions’, as he carried out his much-needed squad overhaul after arriving in March.

And Cowley sees next month’s business as a key period to ensuring a repeat is avoided, when the summer period of recruitment arrives.

Pompey saw 18 players leave and 15 arrive amid a frenetic period of transfer activity ahead of the new campaign.

As well as replenishing the squad for the second half of the campaign, Cowley knows there can’t be a repeat of such swingeing changes.

He said: ‘We know January is a very important time for us.

‘We can only recruit two times a year.

‘We know the summer window is an easier recruitment period, but we can’t ignore the January window.

‘We need to keep moving forward, otherwise we’ll leave ourselves with far too much to do again in the summer.

‘We don’t want to compromise the quality of work we do.

‘In any walk of life if there’s too much work to do, the quality of that work can be compromised.

‘You always want long-term solutions.

‘You don’t want to be putting sticking plasters over problems all the time.

‘In the summer we made some short-term decisions to get to the next window, because there wasn’t a long-term solution.

‘This is sometimes where it’s at. You have to accept that,

‘But wherever possible, you want a clear strategy, clear understanding of where you are today and clear vision of where you want to go.’

Cowley is now approaching eighth months at the Pompey helm, after succeeding Kenny Jackett as boss back in March.

It’s been a tumultuous period for the Londoner, reflected in up-and-down fortunes on the pitch, with things firmly on an upward curve at present.

Cowley feels, when it comes to recruitment, that time has allowed what’s required to crystallise in his mind.

He added: ‘We know how important recruitment is to the outcome.

‘It’s probably 80 per cent of my job, so I always have to try to give it 80 per cent of my time, which can be incredibly challenging with the nature of League One football and the amount of games we play,

‘We have to try to find the right people first and foremost, who can take this club to where it wants to go.

‘They also have to be the right players to complement what we’ve got.

‘The longer you’re here it becomes tangible, and you get a feeling of what the group need in terms of personality and character and what the team needs in terms of profile and attributes of the player.

‘The longer you’re at a club, the easier it gets, because you start to feel we have a DNA now - and I know what we are. Then it becomes much clearer what you’re recruiting for.

‘Last summer we were trying to build what we are.

‘I know what we are and we’re nowhere near what we want to be. Miles off.

‘But it’s becoming clearer by the day what we need - we just have to find it.’

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