'The Championship is a mess' but Portsmouth chairman Michael Eisner isn't running scared - far from it

His commitment comes after eye-watering data revealed Championship clubs during the 2021-22 campaign spent, on average, 125 per cent of their turnover on player wages.

The latest set of accounts also showed the second tier’s then clubs recorded accumulative losses of £290m and a net debt of £1.8bn.

Despite these staggering figures, a return to the Championship is the Blues’ priority as they prepare for a seventh successive season in League One.

Yet Eisner is adamant Pompey are financially and strategically prepared for what the Championship will hopefully throw at them in the near future.

‘Those are horrible statistics,’ the Blues owner said when speaking to the club website on Friday.

‘The Championship is a mess. I think the powers that be are trying to correct that, whether it’s the FA, the government or if it’s the Championship clubs themselves – and I think overtime that will be improved.

‘Maybe the silver lining in this dark cloud of being six years, going into a seventh in League One, is that things are slowly changing. That said, we are not going to put the club in jeopardy and we’re going to be competitive.

‘One of the reasons I can say that is because of the new strategy of less reliance on loans and more sustained effort on young players to build up a back-log - and this also includes improving the academy over time - of young, well-developed players from wherever we can find them.

‘Yes, we are going to be competitive, we are not going to go crazy, we are not taking on any debt, we’ve never taken on any debt, we believe in the long-term of the club.

‘I don’t think we’re going to be promoted to the Premier League a year after we are in the Championship. We’ve got to do it in a sustained brick-by-brick layer.

‘Am I scared about the Championship? Not really. I think it’s a challenge but we can meet that challenge. I will admit when you read about those statistics, you have to think twice about how well you operate.

‘I think we have the right management, we have the right medical management under Rich (Hughes) that is going to be improved in nutrition and all the things that have to happen and we are going to have the right player.

‘I am an optimist and I have been saying since we met six or seven years ago that we would be moving up. I didn’t think we would be moving up in one or two years, I certainly thought we’d be moving up in less than six but when we do move up we will be ready to stay up.’