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Time to 'put flesh on the bones' of stadium plans?

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[BBC]
Bournemouth players celebrate
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As I anticipated on these pages at the beginning of January, Bournemouth have made it through the mid-season transfer window without losing any of their stars - despite the best efforts of some media outlets to predict significant sales.

The Cherries may still lose one or two of their prize assets in the summer - it remains part of the business model for clubs the size of Bournemouth, Brighton or Brentford to have a big sale every year or two to balance the books - but that is a question to be addressed in a few months' time.

Instead, January's recruitment has leaned towards the medium and long term. While Julio Soler fills the gaping hole of left-back cover, the other three new arrivals all fit into the "one for the future" category, notably the deadline day arrival of teenage French forward Eli Junior Kroupi from sister club Lorient, where he will remain on loan for the rest of the season.

Also of interest to fans this week was owner Bill Foley's interview with the US-based "Men In Blazers" podcast, where he dropped some tantalising morsels relating to the Cherries' new stadium plans.

With the new training ground at Canford Magna set to open soon, Bournemouth have been vacillating for a while over whether to redevelop the current Vitality Stadium site, or seek to build a brand new stadium, most likely on land currently hosting the soon-to-be-vacated training pitches and the King's Park athletics stadium.

And despite recent broad hints from within the club that the latter option was preferred, Foley's interview spoke of wanting to "dig down" on the current site to raise the capacity to around 19,000, with the option of increasing it by a further 3,000-4,000 seats.

Foley said the design was "well on the way" but as ever, there remain unanswered questions as to some of the details. Would such a large-scale refurbishment include buying the ground back from landlords Structadene? What would be the timescale of such a project, and would the team be able to continue playing at Vitality Stadium during construction? And if not, where?

Hopefully 2025 should be the year when the club puts some flesh on the bones of its stadium plans.

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[BBC]