Bournemouth’s plan to build a new ground and secure our fanbase is more exciting than any signing
Cherries will be relegated at some point - which is why having a new stadium to accommodate our fans is vital
IT'S strange being a long-time AFC Bournemouth fan right now.
For years and years while playing in the lower-reaches of the Football League, lurching from one financial crisis to the next, rattling buckets at matches to pay the bills, mere survival as a club felt like the best we could hope for.
So, as we head into our third successive season in the top flight, widely-regarded as being more likely to end in the top-half than go down, and signing England and Dutch internationals for serious wedge, it all seems rather surreal.
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To think last season we came ninth, and would have pipped Southampton into eighth had it not been for Harry Arter’s horrible penalty miss away at St Mary’s, which I think may well still be circling the Earth, seems absurd.
It seems all the more bizarre when you consider that, with big-spending, upwardly-mobile Everton part of a separate ‘Big Seven’, we only missed out on coming top of the Best-of-the-Rest league table on goal difference.
But what is most strange is the feeling that we could have done, and could do, better.
The Premier League really is not as good as people like to think. Since coming up, we have taken points off everybody except Manchester City, and so should fear nobody.
Bournemouth transfer news
Last season we lost 22 points from winning positions, the highest of any other side, and hit the woodwork 19 times, with only the slick-attacking Spurs and City doing so more.
If we could have eradicated our soft underbelly, some of the silly mistakes and been a little more clinical, we could have made a better fist of running Everton close for that final Europa League spot, some 15 points ahead of where we finished.
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Admittedly, our issues come from our attacking, possession-based style of play, for which we supporters enjoy and outsiders praise us for.
We also have an ongoing defensive problem. In our first season in the Premier League, only an abject Villa side conceded more.
Last season only four teams let in more than our 67, and we shipped three goals or more 12 times. We conceded at least three goals eight times in a 12-match spell.
Bringing back Jermain Defoe to join a forward line including Joshua King and which is full of goals anyway, has excited the whole support. But all it takes is for the attack to have an off season, and we would be bang in trouble.
So greater solidity at the back must be the aim for this season.
It’s presumably why manager Eddie Howe has brought in defender Nathan Ake for a £20million club record fee, and his former Chelsea team-mate Asmir Begovic in goal.
Whether or not it will make the difference remains to be seen as when Ake was in the first team here on loan last season, our goals against per game figure wasn’t much better than when he wasn’t.
I’d like to see a more experienced centre-back come in to give him and Steve Cook guidance, and club captain Simon Francis - an AFCB legend, who has achieved so much for us, but now seems to be on the wane - eased out.
I’d like to see cover and competition at right-back for Adam Smith. I don’t think we will get either, and that concerns me.
I’d also like to see another central midfielder and winger brought in, and Howe appears to agree having reportedly had £20m bids rejected for Napoli’s Brazil-born Italy international Jorginho and Leicester’s Demarai Grey.
Observers might think this is nit-picking - particularly where we have come from. But, as the saying goes, if you stand still you go backwards, and fans always want their team to perform as best it possibly can.
So there’s not time for sentiment - which Howe, who has improved Bournemouth’s league position every single year he’s been at the club, definitely understands.
Despite all this, what can AFC Bournemouth really hope for in an age where the top sides are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on recruitment? The top seven - and with it European qualification - seems even more boxed off than last year.
So, how about a cup run, the best chance we will now ever have for glory, and a spot in Europe?
Last season Howe made 11 changes for the League Cup and ten for the FA Cup, and we were unsurprisingly dumped out by lower-league opposition both times.
He claims not to disrespect the competitions, but his words don’t match his actions. I’d like to see this change and give at least one of the cups a good go.
But the most crucial thing of all now is, having established ourselves in the Premier League, that we build a stadium that our fanbase deserves.
Too often do we see local kids wearing Man United, Liverpool and Chelsea shirts. They are desperate to see the Premier League football own their doorstep but are currently locked out due to our tiny capacity.
We will, at some point, be relegated. Nobody except the current Big Seven is immune from that danger.
And it would be criminal to go down having failed to increase the fanbase, and give AFC Bournemouth the buffer it needs to survive when the inevitable eventually happens.
Which is why the announcement that the club plans to build a new, bigger ground a few hundred metres from the existing one, rather than a soulless bowl on a park-and-ride outside the town, is the most exciting news of the summer, trumping even the coveted signing of Defoe.
I have criticised the club many times for their off-field operation which perhaps unsurprisingly has been more League One than Premier League, but if they can pull this off they deserve huge kudos.
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