Prospective new AFC Bournemouth owner and NHL side Las Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley has revealed his plans for the Cherries, once his takeover of the club from current owner Maxim Demin is completed.
Earlier this month Bill Foley made the trip over from the United States of America to watch the Cherries defeat 2016 Premier League champions Leicester City.
Foley is just awaiting approval from the Premier League to complete the deal and that is expected to be ratified by the time the World Cup takes place in Qatar.
Foley has revealed that once he is in charge, he will be spending money on the new training complex in Canford and has plans to either redevelop the current stadium, or build a new one.
Foley was speaking to The Athletic, as quoted by the Daily Echo…
“…The one thing I will say about the previous owner, or current owner, is he spent money, but he spent it on players.
“He didn’t spend it on infrastructure. So we need to develop this training facility and have it be state of the art, because right now they’re all kind of compacted into a really small place.”
Discussing the stadium specifically he added…
“On one end of the pitch is a temporary stand, so that can easily be expanded to 5,000-6,000 seats with a double deck,”
“As soon as we buy the stadium, if we decide to go that route, then we’ll get underway on that immediately because we have to have more seats.
“We’re the smallest stadium in the Premier League and it just doesn’t work.
“You can’t get hospitality going. You can’t do a proper job on your sponsorships or your ticketing.
“We’re sold out but it’s because people have been buying these tickets for the last 20 years. We need a new generation to be able to go to games.”
The Athletic’s article elaborated further with the idea that the main stand could also see a second-tier built, however further investigations would have to be made to determine how best to procede with this. Foley’s vision would see either a redeveloped Dean Court or a new stadium, boasting a capacity between 20,000 and 25,000.
Your say…
Herbs wrote…
Having read the article, he quotes the end game is to end up in a “newly developed stadium with 20-25k capacity”.
This can be done a couple of ways on the existing site if we remove Strucadene from the argument for the moment.
By filling in the 4 corners and building a double-tiered South End (quoted at 6k by Foley) and Main Stand then I think we could easily reach those sorts of numbers without major alterations to the North and East stands.
The other option could be to shift the pitch left and down to allow enough space to build all the way around without the expense of buying multiple houses worth £650k plus each.
Exciting times either way I guess.
langham added…
The main point for me in the Echo piece is Foley’s assertion that we need a new generation to get to games – we need to expand the fanbase and get youth into DC to watch live football. Spot on Bill – this is the crux of the issue. More sane strategic thinking please… – Join the conversation, click here.
