Congratulations to AFC Bournemouth, and welcome to the Premier League next season!
Bournemouth have experienced a very similar rise through the Football League that Swansea City did – before winning promotion to the Premier League in 2011 after coming ever so close to going out of business altogether 8 years beforehand.
It was so refreshing to see another small club make it to the top flight in a similar fashion to us this week. Not buying their way to the top – which our rivals Cardiff City proved just doesn’t work – and instead investing time and effort in a good manager – Eddie Howe – and of course in a good squad of players playing attractive football. After all, their record signing only cost them £3m.
From bucket collecting to being saved by their chairman – apparently within just 24 hours of liquidation, he said – ‘We would be the smallest club to ever play in the Premier League and probably ever would be, It would be the greatest fairy tale since Hans Christian Andersen wrote his last one.”
It’s the perfect sequel to Jack to a King if you like, it’s a similar story to us as Bournemouth, a town with a population of just less than 200,000, will host Premier League matches in a ground that can’t even hold 12,000.
Promotion to the Championship is arguably the toughest achievement outside of the Premier League. And what’s even more impressive with Bournemouth’s achievement is that they’ve done it in the tightest promotion challenge we’ve seen in years.
As a result of how close it’s been at the top of the Championship this season, the leaders have swapped regularly – almost every week in fact – as Watford now occupy top spot despite having 4 managers this year alone. Middlesbrough have drifted away in the play-offs – who had also topped the table in recent months.
What we hope now is that AFC Bournemouth make it count, and they can begin to establish themselves as a Premier League club – just like Swansea City have done.
As well as that, journalists and pundits shouldn’t have a knee-jerk, automated prediction for them to suffer an immediate return to the Championship simply because of the size of the club.
It happened with the Swans, but surely this Summer will be the first pre-season where they’re not amongst the favourites for relegation.
Bournemouth could just stay up next year, and we hope they do.
Join the club Bournemouth! Running a club the right way, playing football the right way and proving success can be achieved without lazily just throwing money at it. Not many other clubs are in our company in that respect!
What else is incredible though is the ignorance of BBC Sport. They published a featured article today on other “minnows” who have made it into the Premier League, the likes of Burnley, Wigan and Swindon made the list, but Swansea City were nowhere to be seen.
I find that quite incredible considering how close we were too of going out of the Football League, or even out of business altogether.
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