Rich Hughes explains why Portsmouth did not make Abu Kamara transfer bid
Portsmouth sporting director Rich Hughes says Portsmouth were unable to afford the valuation for Abu Kamara, resulting in the club not launching a bid.
Kamara enjoyed an incredible loan spell at Fratton Park from Norwich City last season, racking up 20 goal contributions, and handed in a transfer request at Carrow Road over the summer to find regular football elsewhere.
The 21-year-old has ended up at Hull City, who slapped down a fee in the region of £4.5m to sign him on a long-term deal.
Hughes told The News [5 September]: “If there was a scenario where it was sustainable and financially sensible to do so, we would have explored it, but we didn’t put in a bid.
“There are high reported figures which I’m sure everyone can understand as the reasons why we weren’t able to get involved in the fight for Abu.
“The point where [Norwich] named a valuation that was far in excess of anything we would be able to achieve was when we moved on and pursued other targets.”
Portsmouth must spend within their means
The enormous gulf between the Championship and League One becomes even more apparent when transfer fees get bandied about.
Some of the numbers these days are outrageous – you only have to look at what Leeds United received for some of their top talent from Premier League clubs during the window.
Portsmouth were never going to try and compete with established clubs in the division to buy players for multi-million pound sums, but have been relatively productive in their summer squad surgery.
As Pompey commentator Moon pointed out in his BBC Sport column [5 September], plenty of six-figure fees were spent on bolstering the squad for the marathon season ahead.
Kamara is very well thought of on the South Coast, but when a deal is simply unfeasible, there is no use in dwelling on it and missing out on more realistic targets.
In other Portsmouth news, David Norris discusses what went wrong against Sunderland.
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