Jefferson Farfan has turned down a move to Pompey because he believed that staying with PSV in the Champions League would be of his best interests, though I'm sure Ronald Koeman had a part to play in that. Real Betis have had two bids for striker Edu proposed by Pompey but have been knocked back. Twice. Didier Zokora chose Tottenham over us and Yaya Toure has also rejected a move to the South Coast. It could be said that these players believe Pompey is not a big enough club for them to join and fulfil their ambitions of success.
I can see their point. Let's face it, if we disregard our financial situation we are one of the smallest clubs in the Premiership. In fact, in my opinion only Fulham, Watford and Wigan. Don't get me wrong, I believe that this club has massive potential and the financial status is only going to help it get bigger but with the worst stadium in the league we can only attract a minimal attendance, the training facilities are hardly impressive and we haven't had much success when it comes to recent history. Therefore if we do place a bid for player who belongs to a club that has a bigger status than us then of course we're going to get knocked back time and time again! This is the problem with big name players, they want to join big name clubs and the name "Portsmouth" does not come into the same category as the names "Liverpool", "PSV Eindhoven" or even "Real Betis".
Unfortunately this situation is a catch 22. We can only get more success if we sign better players, but better players won't sign if we don't get much success. Of course, a newer stadium will help attract better players but that still seems light years away. So what do we do? There seems to be two options.
The first option would be to sign "past it" big name players. We're already trying this strategy by bringing in Sol Campbell; who might not be as good as he once was but would still improve our defence no end. If we were to sign a big name player it might create a snowball effect and more bigger name players would consider us a more serious option having seen proof of the ambition this football club has. Alternatively we could forget the "big name" option altogether and instead go for players who are much more likely to sign for us, namely the best players from Championship clubs or players out of favour that could easily do a job for us whilst weakening the opposition. Look at Wigan last season, they poached Arjan De Zeeuw from us, not a big name player at all but he was one of the signings of the season, one that significantly weakened our defence. Top players from the Championship could also work, Tim Cahill and Danny Gabbidon are just two names from the top of my head who have adapted to the Premiership with ease.
Either way, we still shouldn't panic yet as there's still time to make massive improvements to the squad although our first friendly game starts next week, so if we could get these signings earlier then they would have more time to gel. For the record Stilian Petrov, Nicholas Anelka, Achille Emana and Sol Campbell are the current names linked and Brian Priske still hasn't gone yet either...