Saints have offered to help Pompey gain FA Premier Academy status.

Pompey are the only Premiership club without an established FA Academy but chairman Milan Mandaric has said that one of the roles for new executive director Velimir Zajec will be to replace the club's Centre of Excellence, by gaining FA Academy status for the club.

And Saints, who have one of the top FA Premier League Academies in the country, are willing to do their neighbours a favour - by giving them some of the secrets behind their success.

Saints Academy director Huw Jennings said: "There is a rivalry between the two sets of fans, we're both Premiership combatants and if Portsmouth's application to become an Academy was accepted, they would be rivals in that sense as well.

"But we would see it as good competition and of course we would be prepared to help them. We're both competing for players in the area but we both belong to the football family and all academy directors are trying to work together for the good of youth development.

"Four years ago the former Portsmouth chief executive Barrie Pierpoint was researching accommodation for young players and came to look at The Lodge (home for the Saints Academy scholars), so it's been done before.

"We certainly don't have a problem with having a discussion with Portsmouth. There's collaboration between the clubs in a lot of areas, in terms of both Health and Safety and the respective Club in the Community programmes.

"And although we are competing for talented youngsters we would love to have a regular games programme with Portsmouth's youth teams. At the moment we can't have that but that would obviously change if they took on Academy status."

The elite FA Academy was put in place in 1998 and Saints were awarded their Academy licence that same year. Last year Saints won the FA Academy Premier League under 19 championship for the first time.

And now Mandaric wants Pompey to have the extra kudos that goes with competing in the FA Premier Academy League after seeing Dexter Blackstock become Saints' first Academy graduate to net a Premiership goal - in the Hampshire derby last weekend.

Mandaric said: "We can't go out every year and buy a Yakubu but when you look at our youth set-up we are way behind even clubs like Southampton and Charlton and we need to put that right.

"Velimir has created superb academies for two clubs, Dinamo Zagreb and Panathinaikos, but we would not be very smart if we did not listen to people who have successful Academies in this country and I have a lot of respect for what Southampton have done.

"It would be good to sit down with Southampton and discuss the way they do things at their Academy. But I do not need reminding what Dexter Blackstock did to us last weekend!"

A typical FA Premier Academy costs around £400-£750,000 a year to run and the Saints Academy is one of 38 Premier and Football League Academies in the country, all of which have been registered by the FA.