Portsmouth owner Michael Eisner commits to Blues transfer strategy - and makes relegation pledge

The struggling Blues are currently five points adrift at the foot of the Championship and threatened with an instant return to League One.

As a consequence, their summer transfer policy of chiefly signing talented, young players, albeit with many lacking experience, has come under increased scrutiny.

The January window has now become pivotal to remaining in the Championship, with sporting director Rich Hughes and head coach John Mousinho insisting the Blues will be doing business.

And chairman Michael Eisner, speaking in a pre-recorded video message for Wednesday night’s Portsmouth Supporters’ Trust AGM, backed his belief in the existing transfer strategy.

He said: ‘I guess it’s kind of a difficult time to talk about progress in the non-football area, but we have to deal with what we have to deal with.

‘It has been an upsetting beginning of the Championship season, I think the success of last season is not forgotten and we have to deal with going forward - and we will.

‘Let me just say at the start, we are not going to be relegated. Period.

‘You know, there really are no excuses. We did meet six of the seven top teams in the Championship to start off with and if that was it we could use that as an excuse, but then we met teams that were down where we are and we still couldn’t put it together. But our strategy is our strategy and I think we will prevail.

‘We were very fortunate to come in with Mark Catlin as the CEO and now we have Andrew who is a fantastic CEO. We are thrilled with Tony (Brown) in the financial area and we are particularly thrilled with John and Rich.

‘You may not think that today because we have lost more than a few games in a row, but we have made long-term arrangements with them, we have great faith in them, they will grow with the team, so we are behind them.

‘That said, I am always optimistic, I am emboldened by the fact we have work to do to not be relegated.’

Michael Eisner was accompanied by son Eric in the 10-minute video address, which was shown in the event held at the newly-refurbished Victory Suite at Fratton Park.

And Eric explained more about the strategy behind the signing of 15 new players last summer, of which seven involved transfer fees.

Eric Eisner added: ‘Last year was such an amazing year, full of winning. We knew coming into this season it would be a lot more losing, obviously we didn’t expect the extent we are at right now.

‘We are going to stick with our strategy, our football strategy has to remain consistent over the long term, which is to recruit younger players, develop them internally for ourselves and then either sell them on or use them to rise in the Championship and hopefully get to the Premier League one day.

‘As I say that, because of our poor start in January, we may have to adopt a little bit of a different strategy relying on loan players, but we are only going to bring in players that can affect the team right away, that can get us up the table and out and if we are in the position of a Great Escape we would happily do that.

‘We need to stick to our guns, continue with our strategy, rely on our management that we have faith in, develop our players and continue on. I think over the long term that is a great strategy, we do not want to be a yo-yo club.’