Rich Hughes is cautious about revealing Pompey’s Championship aspirations now their 12-year exile is over.
But the sporting director is adamant the Blues won’t be ‘making up the numbers’.
Following their League One title triumph, next season will mark Pompey’s participation in the Championship for the first time since 2011-12.
Before the transfer window reopens on June 14, work is already well under way to bolster John Mousinho’s team for the task.
However, Hughes thinks it’s crucial to hold his own opinions about the Blues’ exact goals for 2024–25 at this early stage.
“We need to take stock, assess what various things look like, and work through that internally as a collective,” he said to The News. “I wouldn’t like to answer that just yet.”
We aren’t in the Championship to pad the stats, but we can set the bar for ourselves to reach that.
“I genuinely believe that the football team’s goals for the league table should be extremely private and protected; otherwise, you set yourself up for failure.”
A broader mandate is something we also desire, but when you have goals or aspirations, you can have the things that are very simply quantifiable in terms of where you want to finish in the league.
“Yes, we want to achieve great success, but we also want to improve off the pitch.”
Since the transfer window hasn’t even opened, it’s extremely hard to anticipate the upcoming season. When the time is ripe, we will conduct an internal stocktake and have those discussions as a group.
We’ve worked too hard to get there, and while we want to be competitive and keep moving forward, we will not be making up any figures.
Together, as a coaching staff, medical staff, and culinary team, we want to continue improving both on and off the pitch.
“Everyone wants to improve, and it’s nice to see these things beginning to materialise as a result of achievement.”
The Blues are wrapping up construction at the Pompey Health & Fitness Club in order to move their facilities out of the current Portakabins.
Furthermore, those upgrades should be finished by the end of June, in time for the start of pre-season.
“We are at the point where we are improving the training ground,” Hughes continued. “Last summer was the base point of the staff we recruited.”
“We want to keep making the progress we have on the pitch, and the football club as a whole feels the same way.”
Whether they are in Fratton Park, the training facility, or somewhere in between, everyone wants to advance. We need to never stop improving, moving forward, and pushing the envelope.
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