Portsmouth owner sets record straight on playing budget rumours and lays down clear ambition for success

And the Blues director has laid down a clear ambition to rapidly accelerate his club’s exit from League One.

Eisner and fellow director Andy Redman are in England for a whistlestop visit, which took in today’s clash with Bristol Rovers.

The Americans spoke to The News ahead of this afternoon’s game, where Eisner addressed talk of the first-team kitty being cut moving forward.

Eisner stressed the budget has grown year on year under Tornante’s ownership - and that will likely be the case moving forward.

The son of Blues chairman, Michael Eisner, knows there is frustration among supporters at the prospect of a seventh straight season in League One.

With some of Pompey’s rivals hiking their budgets this year, Eisner said the club will ‘assess’ their plans with regard to next season.

But he laughed off the notion of the playing pot shrinking moving forward.

Eisner said: ‘It’s just not true.

‘The playing budget has gone up each year.

‘This is not a division we’re intending to stay in for too much longer, so we’ll field a competitive team.

‘If you look at the teams potentially coming down, they are in financial difficulty.

‘It’s certainly not something we’ll slash. We’ll assess where we are at and accumulate who we sing, who we bring in on loan and who Rich brings in.

‘We won’t be saying this is an exact playing budget.

‘We’ll field a competitive team and we’ll aim for promotion, if this is the league we’re in,

‘We want to develop the recruitment team, but we are invested on the pitch.

‘We have a strategy that we believe will yield results moving forward.

‘This year is an extreme year, where people are spending extreme amounts to reach the Championship.

‘We didn’t see that a couple of years ago, so we will assess what happens next year and continue to recruit young players to become assets for the team.

‘We work fluidly. If there is a target we are going after, you can ask past managers, we are open to it. We are not stringent and stuck saying “this is it”.

‘If there is the right opportunity to go after a player we will.’