Portsmouth boss’ transfer message as Luton Town, Hull City, Cardiff City & Co splash cash in survival bid

But the Blues boss acknowledged the delicate balancing act between delivering a squad fit to fight for their second-tier place this season, without hurting longer-term recruitment strategies.

The transfer window closed on Monday night, with Mousinho confident his squad is now stronger for bringing in eight new faces. Pompey’s business was a mix of four loans and four permanent deals, with the £1.3m shelled out to bring in Hayden Matthews the biggest fee paid in 14 years.

That figure paled in comparison to the sums being spent by relegation rivals, however, with the likes of Luton, Cardiff and Hull City doing some big business with fees to match. The Hatters shelled out £5m for Isaiah Jones, Cardiff £3.5m for striker Yousef Salech while Hull did a swathe of impressive deals including landing Kyle Joseph for £2.5m.

Mousinho said: ‘There’s been a bit of mixture of business. A couple of sides have lost players and teams like Plymouth have lost what look like their better players from the outside in (Morgan) Whittaker and (Ibrahim) Cissoko.

‘Luton have parachute payments and have spent money not many in the league can spend, let alone teams down the bottom. The likes of Hull have been busy, too, so it’s been a bit of a mixed bag.

‘What we can’t affect is what other sides do and we had our strategy going into the window, slightly varied from where we were in the past.

‘We’re very clear that what we had to focus on was being stronger now and making sure we affect ourselves between now and the end of the season. We had to do that and the best way to do that was with loans, but we didn’t want to lose sight of the longer-term ones as well.

‘If you look at Tom (Waddingham) and Hayden (Matthews), who have actually affected the first team anyway, we weren’t thinking they were ones who had to come in and be front-liners - whereas Isaac Hayden and Rob Atkinson were front-liners. They weren’t for future development, they were loans.

‘We had to just get our own business right and make sure we were stronger.

‘Whatever other sides decide to do, if they are spending huge sums of money on players, that’s not the way we want to operate. We want to do smart business and we are prepared to spend money - we showed that with the likes of Hayden, who we are really excited about.

‘We have to keep going forward with that, do our best to stay in the league and keep moving forward.’

‘Firefighting’

Though content with a playing budget which has again been stretched in the winter window, Mousinho admitted Pompey have to box clever to close the gap with the resources of rivals. Championship-ready loans has been the avenue to doing so in 2025, but the Blues head coach explained that has to be balanced off against recruiting for the future.

He added: ‘We have to be smart in everything we do.

‘We have to recruit well and at the right time. We have to take the right players who are available to us - and I feel we’ve definitely done that. Then we have to balance that off with ones like Hayden Matthews and Tom Waddingham, who we didn’t earmark to impact the team straightaway.

‘It’s about getting the business right, so we hopefully stay in the league and develop as a football club we have those front-line assets who are worth a significant amount of money.

‘We just have to have a combination of the two and it is a difficult balance to strike in the Championship.

‘We do want to to stay in the league so we’ve had to be short term, but we can’t completely lose sight of the long term or we’ll forever be bringing in five or six loans and fire-fighting. You have to get the balance between the two.’