Portsmouth boss hits back at Charlton Athletic owner’s claims he’s spending big to deliver promotion.

The Blues boss brushed off the suggestion there's been big spending at Fratton Park in an effort to reach the Championship this term.

And Cowley underlined a conviction it’s been a busy summer of trading and operating shrewdly in the transfer market, which has allowed him assemble a squad able to compete with some powerful rivals.

Charlton owner Thomas Sandgaard last week stated Pompey are ‘investing more aggressively in getting promoted’, after several of years of balancing the books.

Cowley pointed to the departure of Marcus Harness to Ipswich for a fee of around £750,000, as key to his business with a dozen players arriving and the same amount leaving PO4.

Of those, Colby Bishop cost £500,000 from Accrington with Zak Swanson joining for a nominal fee from Arsenal. Pompey’s remaining recruits were free agents or loans.

Cowley insisted any notion of big spending is wide of the mark.

He said: ‘I’d say he (Sandgaard) doesn’t know. For us, we know what we’re working with and what we’re trying to achieve.

‘We have a lot of respect for Charlton and they have a really good squad and fantastic academy.

‘I look at their academy and Ipswich’s and that’s what we’re striving to be at Portsmouth.

‘For us, though we know the truth.

‘You don’t get many compliments in football.

‘All my successful teams normally get criticised when they win.

‘Normally when people say you’ve got a big budget that is a back-handed compliment to say you’ve got a good team.

‘For us, we had to trade and everyone knows this.

‘We had to trade one of our key players, a player who scored double figures and double figures for assists.’

Cowley highlighted the importance of Pompey selling Harness for a fee which represented decent business, with the 26-year-old having a year remaining on his deal.

He feels it was significant for the club’s owners to see a return on the £750,000 they paid Burton Albion three years ago, after taking big hits on Ellis Harrison and John Marquis after they were signed for a combined £1.425m.

Cowley added: ‘We had to trade him (Harness) to find a way of getting better, and there was a lot of risk in that.

‘It’s not easy to do that, it’s certainly a lot easier to improve by adding to your best players.

‘I think it was important for the owners, too, because they’d invested so much in Ellis (Harrison) and John Marquis and hadn’t seen a return.

‘So it was important they saw a return in Marcus Harness.

‘They then allowed us to reinvest some of that into Colby, so it’s been good business for us.’