Portsmouth boss Avram Grant fears the ending of their transfer ban may have arrived too late.

After their 1-1 draw with West Ham United, Grant is hopeful of landing "three or four" new players by the end of the month, but admits any transfer deals would have been more beneficial to his team if they had been concluded earlier in the month.

He said: "It's good news but if we're looking at how things needed to be, we needed to do it on January 1.

"If we had brought in three or four players, we would have come into this game with a full bench.

"As I understand, we can only bring in loan players or players without a contract.

"We'll try to do our best but we have only four days. It will be very difficult but we'll do it because the squad is very short."