Written by Winsor Cherry
My feelings this morning are anger and frustration. I’m sure this is all centred around concern for AFC Bournemouth’s future.
Personally I am not bothered about the Premier League but considering our financial history when the unthinkable happened and we reached it ‘earning’ in excess of £600million in the process we should, in my opinion, have achieved 3 things as an absolute minimum.
1/ Bought our ground back or built a new one
2/ Grown our fan base
3/ Have a rainy day fund.
We have not achieved any of these and so we will continue paying rent to Structadene in order to play football in a tiny stadium with a ‘temporary’ stand. Had we bought our ground and filled in the corners, plus not overspent on players and their wages we could look forward to a bright future and enjoy all the benefits the Championship offers.
Sadly our club is not the same anymore, we (the fans) have not been needed during the last 5 years so have not been valued and in my case even responded to.
I am currently hoping a miracle now happens
1/ Somehow manage to stay up
2/ Realise how close we were to leaving the Premier League with nothing, so cut our cloth accordingly EVEN if it does mean not investing so much in the team. (most don’t appear to be too bothered about the club anyway)
3/ Buy our ground and ring-fence some funds so we do not need to worry about buckets and administration.
I very much hope that my fears regarding our future do not come to fruition.
bpl234 added…
Thing is you get into the top league and you want to compete. That costs money and for 5 years we have. To say we should have spent all this money on other things such as a stadium. If we had we would have been down after season 1.
Eddie has got the best squad this club has ever seen. A mixture of severe injuries, lack of confidence, some bad luck and the team not being able to click hasn’t helped.
There was a stat against wolves where 6 of their players had played every league this season. We have had none.
Our best performances and runs have come when we have played a consistent settled team and this year that has not happened. – Join the conversation, click here.
AFCBmattjamr asks about the financial fallout?
Never paid too much attention to the financial side of the game (I know we posted a £30million loss this year though) so how bad is the financial Fallout going to be if/when we go down?
Should we be concerned that we will end up exactly where we started with administrations and buckets collections or we will be alright?
kirsikka answered…
Buckets aren’t going to make even a dent in the debt we’ll have.
Some incredibly tough decisions will have to be made. ie abandon all hope of promotion, clear out all the players that we can play youngsters and pocket the parachute money to pay down the debt OR go for a Vegas-style gamble it all in the hope we can come straight back up.
More than half the clubs in the Championship pay more in wages than their total turnover. That’s before all other expenses are then taken into account. It’s a financial aberration of a league and we aren’t exactly dropping into it from a position of strength.
Come what may I’ll still be here posting rubbish but it looks like it might well be a rocky few years ahead. – Join the conversation, click here.
