Tino Anjorin makes Southampton claim after joining Portsmouth | OneFootball

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Ahead of fresh promotion ambitions, Portsmouth made a whole host of captures across the summer transfer window.

The likes of Gavin Whyte, Regan Poole and Anthony Scully among many others have headed down to the south coast and will now be tasked with finally guiding Pompey back to the second-tier of English football for the first time in over a decade.

Another high-profile acquisition is Tino Anjorin, who struck a loan agreement with the club on Thursday.

Who is new Portsmouth signing Tino Anjorin?

The attacking midfielder has joined on loan from Chelsea, where he has long been held in an esteemed regard courtesy of his displays for the club's academy.

Anjorin emerged from Chelsea's youth system in remarkable company alongside the likes of Callum Hudson-Odoi, Reece James, Conor Gallagher and Billy Gilmour.

Equally adept as a winger, Anjorin spent last season loaned out at Championship outfit Huddersfield Town, although he only featured on nine occasions for the Terriers owing to injury setbacks.

He scored twice in the league, both of which came in a stunning 2-2 home draw with West Bromwich Albion last August.

It was an extension of Anjorin's stay in West Yorkshire after he had made eight appearances during the second-half of the 2021/22 campaign as Huddersfield surged towards the play-offs.

Prior to that, he had spent six months out in Russia with Lokomotiv Moscow, with then-manager Ralf Rangnick likening the prospect to Kevin De Bruyne, implementing a £17m purchase option into the deal and un-retiring the club's famed number 10 shirt in a significant show of faith and an illustration of Anjorin's quality.

Now, he will finally be desperate to make inroads away at Chelsea and come good on the undoubted potential had once made him one of the most vaunted young footballers in the country.

Portsmouth may well present a window of opportunity to do just that, and based off his recent comments on bitter rivals Southampton, he has already won over the club's supporters, too.

What has Portsmouth's Tino Anjorin said about Southampton?

As is always the case with fierce rivalries within English football, both opposing sets of supporters engage relentlessly about which club is of a bigger size and Anjorin has decided to sink his teeth into the age-old debate, believing his new side to be superior to their adversaries in Hampshire.

Crucially, Anjorin was born and raised in Dorset despite his Cobham education, so it is hard to contest that he is very qualified to make such a controversial admission.

Speaking after sealing his switch from Chelsea, Anjorin told Portsmouth News: "I know Portsmouth is a massive club. I’m from down south, so I know they’re a bigger club than Bournemouth and Southampton.

"We have to get Pompey back to where they belong. Pompey's not a League One club, Pompey's not a Championship club - Pompey are a Premier League club.

"I guess this is about the first steps in getting back up to those levels, so the ambition now is to get promotion."

Are Portsmouth really a bigger club than Southampton?

While this interminable wrangle will certainly not be solved by Anjorin's comments, he may just be right.

Granted, recent years have been much kinder to Southampton, who had thrived in the Premier League and tried their hand in European competition with stars such as Sadio Mane and Virgil Van Dijk while Pompey have been struggling in the lower echelons.