Mark Catlin has told Pompey fans: We'll spend what we need to spend on players - but not more than we can afford.

He was addressing the issue of what the budget will be for the new season after Kenny Jackett said last week there was unlikely to be an overall increase in what the Blues had to play with financially.

Catlin told The News Pompey would remain sensible - and said the budget was flexible and could change over time.

He told the paper: 'Budgets should remain private. It helps no one other than players’ agents and opposing clubs if it’s disclosed. We don’t want to give people an advantage in any way

‘It (any signings) has to be within the general budget and players’ wages have to fit. What you want is consistency - and that’s what we strive for. What you don’t want is to be caught in an upward spiral.

‘We’ve seen that with clubs lately who you didn’t see getting into financial difficulties. You can end up there. We know that from our own experience and we’re just never, ever going to allow that to happen.

‘We’ll never put the future of the club in jeopardy. When we move on a player it will be what we can afford within our operating P&L. It doesn’t mean we stand still. We are still looking to progress as we have consistently over a number of years. That is a fact.

‘There will be investment but investments which bring money back into the club. Then that money can be reinvested, whether that be player transfer fees, the playing budget or innovative business opportunities.

‘Our budget is very flexible, we may start off with ‘X’, but, as an example, through a combination of the strength of our commercial activities, and money generated through player ‘outs’, we end up with ‘Y’.

‘And above all of this, if the manager comes to us with a player he may want to sign outside of the agreed budget then we will of course listen to this sympathetically on a case-by-case basis.

‘The bottom line is the current playing budget is an irrelevance in the scheme of things, it’s just a rough snapshot of where we currently are at this moment in time. That’s how our model works, we are flexible, the more we generate, the more we can increase.

‘All that I can assure fans is that their ambitions are matched by our’s, all within the parameters of never ever putting the club in jeopardy again.’

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