Arsenal and Aston Villa were also interested in signing O'Brien but the teenager has opted to join Pompey's academy to learn from the likes of David Coles and David James.
So that's another promising youngster that Pompey have poached then, and yet another sign of how far this club has come in the last few years as there is no way we could have stolen youngsters from another club before Paul Hart joined as director of Pompey's youth academy.
Of course, the main point of the academy is to produce players for the first team but we all know that Harry Redknapp has a history of not giving youth players a chance.
Hopefully our current crop of youngsters will earn their chance and become a success as that is something that Pompey have been lacking considering the only good player to come from the youth system in recent memory is Gary O'Neil and he's gone now.
Still, I'm confident that our new set up will progress to great things and surpass Southampton's own academy in time. After our ladies hammered theirs 21-1 the other week and so their youth is the only pride they have left at the moment. Wouldn't it just be great to steal that from them as well?