Exclusive:Portsmouth recruitment chief vows lessons to be learnt after costly £1m transfer 'mistake'

Rich Hughes is adamant Pompey will learn from their Luke Le Roux ‘mistake’.

Just 13 months after signing from IFL Varnamo for a reported £1.1m, the South Africa international had his Fratton contract cancelled by mutual consent in September.

The Blues refute claims about the size of the transfer figure and also point to wage savings made by agreeing a termination with two years left on Le Roux’s playing deal.

Nonetheless, Pompey have made a significant loss on a player who would feature just 16 times under John Mousinho, starting seven Championship matches.

And Hughes insists he, head of recruitment Brad Wall and Mousinho must ensure there isn’t a repeat of such costly transfer errors.

‘That’s something we have to do better at’

The Blues sporting director told The News: ‘There will be a lot of people assessing the situation, so I want to make everyone really clear that myself, John, Brad, everyone involved with recruitment, we turn the lens on ourselves first and foremost.

‘Luke was a very polite young man, trained really well and, for various reasons, it didn’t work. There wouldn’t ever be a level from myself and John where we wouldn’t look at that and go “That’s something we have to do better at”.

‘It didn’t work for various reasons and we have to make sure we minimise those as best as we can. We know it falls with us, it’s not an exact science, it really isn’t, there are a lot of factors to it.

‘It’s now up to us to take the learnings from that and try to ensure those things don’t happen again.

‘The numbers reported aren’t exactly right, notwithstanding the concept still isn’t right that we’ve signed a player over a year ago and we’re at a point where we are terminating a contract within 12-13 months.

‘That’s not the way in which we operate, it wasn’t how we thought it would pan out, but we have to go back and take the learnings and ensure those things don’t happen again. We must eradicate as many of those mistakes as we can.’

Move to Cercle Brugge

Just eight days after his Pompey exit, Le Roux joined Belgium top-flight side Cercle Brugge on a two-year deal.

The 26-year-old, who started the Blues’ opening match of the season against West Ham in the Carabao Cup, has still to feature for his new club.

Although, with the international break, the Belgian Pro League club have fulfilled just two fixtures since his arrival three weeks ago.

Mousinho added: ‘With Luke, cancelling his contract meant there is a saving on the salary side of things, which was probably a good part of it, but the transfer fee still remains.

‘We paid for a player and found ourselves 12 months down the line where he wasn’t providing that value. That’s not a dig at Luke in that context, it’s just a decision we felt we had to make to lose the wages, lose the spot and allow us to do the last few bits we wanted to do.

‘It didn't work, it didn’t quite fit, so we have to take that and move on from it. You must learn quickly and try to eradicate it from happening again.’

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