Portsmouth in no hurry to sign players - Al-Fahim

Portsmouth are in no hurry to sign players and will probably wait until next summer before splashing out in the transfer market, the English Premier League club's new owner was quoted as saying yesterday.

"You have to do things at their own speed and at the moment the priority for Portsmouth is to create a good infrastructure so that the club can have a serious face in the future," United Arab Emirates investor Sulaiman al-Fahim told Spanish sports daily Marca in an interview in Valencia.

Al-Fahim, who was in the Spanish city to attend the chess re-match between Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov, completed the purchase of Portsmouth last month.

He told Marca his plan for the south-coast club was based on developing talent in the youth programme and mentioned Premier League rivals Arsenal and Barcelona as models to imitate.

Portsmouth are bottom of the standings after losing their first six league games of the season - the worst start to an English top-flight campaign since Leicester City in 1983.