AFC Bournemouth
A club statement from AFC Bournemouth’s shareholders and board of directors.
There is a strong vision for the future of AFC Bournemouth, which will take time, patience and the necessary financial resources to create.
This vision revolves crucially, and as a priority, around a team that is stable, established and competitive in the Premier League.
Since being promoted to the Premier League in the summer of 2015, our manager, Eddie Howe, has been consistently backed every season in the transfer market, including a record outlay this summer, to ensure the club attracts top class talent to enhance an already strong and motivated team.
Being a Premier League team brings financial rewards. However, every penny of those funds, together with significant, additional investment from the club’s shareholders, has been put in to ensuring AFC Bournemouth remain at this level.
The financial risks the shareholders have taken to realise this vision cannot be underestimated.
Those risks paved the way for AFC Bournemouth to become a Premier League club and have given the club the financial support it has today. The follow-on benefits have been significantly felt throughout not only the town but the whole of Dorset.
Part of the club’s vision includes, in time where resources allow, to build first class facilities for the squad, staff and supporters. We have demonstrated our commitment to this with the purchase of land for the development of a new multimillion-pound training ground.
The board acknowledge we were overly optimistic that a new stadium would be completed by the summer of 2020. Any future developments will be undertaken around a healthy financial strategy that does not take away our ability to perform at our strongest levels on the pitch and risk what has been achieved to date.
With regard to the developments, when we have a reliable timeframe we will make those facts known.
In this respect, we appreciate the fans’ continued and passionate support of the team, which is wholeheartedly felt on the pitch every week by the manager and the squad.
Be assured, the board is working hard to achieve not only the vision of supporters but also the ambitions of all those associated with AFC Bournemouth for an exciting future in the best league in the world.
