F**K them . I have all the time in the world for the decent fans , and yes I have met a lot . As for the ones who started coming out with the Scummer comments after they got promoted , they can **** right off ! IIRC we actually had buckets passed around to help the survive years ago ?
Let alone England no. 1. Beggars belief. Edit: I would honestly put all 3 Southampton keepers ahead of Pickford!
For a brief moment, it looked like Bournemouth might ride their luck and survive. If I am honest, the club has done fantastically well to survive five seasons in the top flight. It has been a remarkable achievement and incredible to believe how close they had previously been to going out of the league altogether in recent history. They looked a bit wobbly last season and the scale of the injury crisis they experienced this season effectively meant there were few teams as genuinely poor as them this season. All bottom four clubs have been shocking in what has been a pretty poor league. I think Howe will walk and I think Willo was 100% right in the Radio Solent interview last night that it will be extremely difficult for them to get out of the Championship. In my opinion, this has been a one off experience for Bournemouth fans and something for them to tell the grand-children about. They will be more likely to struggle next season as mount a promotion bid and I believe that the likely path of this club is now downwards. The better players will be picked off and you can imagine Vengerov pulling the plug on the plug. Definitely a once in a lifetime experience for Bournemouth and very likely one never to be repeated. For what it is worth, I wonder what the odds are of Eddie Howe popping up at Fratton Park at some point in the future, assuming he leaves the Vitality?
My worry if I were a Bmth fan would be, where is the legacy of being in the Prem and where has the money gone. From widely published documents, they received about £107 million last season; let’s be conservative and say they received £90 million a year for the five years, so approx £450 million in their time. I appreciate that the most recent TV deal would’ve earned them more than the last one, so again, let’s conservatively take £100 million off. As we know, the stadium hasn’t really changed, no structural work other than cosmetics. The training ground they have is a large AstroTurf part of a public park, aside a small private building. They have spent the last 12 months or so doing drainage work on the new training facility; however, I can’t imagine that will go ahead. They purchased the site for nearly £4 million. Their Achilles Heel (aka the stadium or lack thereof) is owned by the Council as is the land they intend to build the new stadium on, so they haven’t purchased land to build a new one on. That leaves players bought and wages; and sadly, this is where they have come unstuck. Too many poor purchases on high wages and not enough players playing at full potential. Yes, they have been unlucky with injuries and this is an area that needs investigation. Last season they had a huge spate of knee injuries, this season the injuries were more varied but something is still very bizarre. Agreed, they will probably struggle to come back up unless they quickly keep Howe on a new probject, hoover up lots of young loans and buy young talent... something I think Howe could be quite good at. Other than that, I would be worried exactly how much has been pocketed and by who...
Added to the injuries they had their supply line dried up when Fraser had his head turned and then ended up refusing to play for them from June onwards... A player plucked from obscurity and given his chance in the Premier League who was unwilling to try and give something back in the last two months to a team that made him. Sad state of affairs...
