This time 10 years ago, AFC Bournemouth were preparing for their second consecutive season in League 2, their first full season under Eddie Howe. A few weeks previously they had defied the odds to preserve their League status despite a 17 point deduction for the 2008/09 season.
Fast forward to today and the Cherries are preparing for their fifth successive season in the Premier League. Barely even involved in a survival scrap in the last four years, the club’s longevity in the top tier is a feat perhaps trumping of their meteoric rise through the football league in the six years before.
Eddie Howe is an enigmatic figure. Adored on the South Coast, Howe has been linked with the Arsenal and England jobs as they became available in recent years. Yet he stayed at Dean Court, building and repairing a side which consistently retains Premier League status with ease.
Howe’s spending habits certainly seem to follow trends though, simple but effective principles that have enabled the club to bring in players with little to no risk. Several players have moved to the South Coast and justified their price tag, while the few who haven’t have been moved on at little detriment to the club.
These trends are indicative of Bournemouth’s successful transfer policy, which we describe below. Simple yet effective principles which have proved the backbone for the Cherries’ recruitment since they reached the Premier League.
Spend more than you sell, within reason
Pretty simple this one and Bournemouth are by no means the only club to be doing this. In every season since promotion to the top tier in 2015, the Cherries have spent more in fees than they received (this actually extends further back than 2015, 2011/12 was the last season in which they took more in transfer sales than they spent).
In fact, Bournemouth made a net loss of over £60 million last season alone, with David Brooks, Dominic Solanke and Jefferson Lerma among those to have joined whilst Benik Afobe, Lewis Grabban and forgotten man Max Gradel the only players to have left for a fee.
Last season’s transfer spend of £80 million was more than Spurs and Arsenal among others, and Jefferson Lerma’s £25 million arrival remains their transfer record today.
How do they afford such spending, given they don’t recoup as much in sales? Without delving into the club’s finances too deeply, the answer is the Premier League prize and TV money.
Considering only the money from the Premier League, the Cherries earned the 14th highest amount last season. 14th may seem insignificant, but that income stands at a staggering £105 million.
That figure can more than plug the gap when it comes to a net loss in transfer fees, though it must be remembered that with ever-increasing wage bills at the top of the game, Bournemouth’s playing staff will be taking home a large chunk of that figure.
How has Eddie Howe chosen to spend though? The answer is carefully as we will describe below. Though they pay more than they sell, they pay smartly, enabling them to sell later on…
Buy players with a resale value
Again obvious, but how many teams sign players approaching or past 30 and get stuck with them (Alexis Sanchez is probably the best example of this)? Though Bournemouth don’t make as much as they pay in transfers, the players they have brought in have either succeeded or been sold on for another fee.
Howe has made mistakes, undeniably, but season by season he seems to be getting more and more decisions right. In 2015/16, their first season in the top-flight, the Cherries signed Max Gradel and Glenn Murray, for fees exceeding £8 million and £4 million respectively.
Gradel suffered a long term injury weeks into his first season in the Premier League and never made an impact after recovering. Murray was 32 when he joined the club, and after helping Bournemouth survive he moved to Brighton for a fee of £3.15 million the following season.
In terms of resale, these two are among Bournemouth’s worst performers, yet they managed a fee for both and a loss of just £1 million on a 34-year-old Glenn Murray.
More recently, the Cherries have sold on Benik Afobe and Lewis Grabban, each for substantial sums, while Tyrone Mings is currently linked with a £15 million move to Aston Villa, which would represent a large profit on a player who most fans would consider to have failed at the club.
Monitoring the resale value of a player was said to be one of Sir Alex Ferguson’s greatest strengths as manager of Manchester United, with the legendary Red Devils manager rarely letting a player see out their contract or leave for cheap (think Jaap Stam, Cristiano Ronaldo, etc.).
It would be ludicrous of me to draw such a comparison between Ferguson and Howe, but the Bournemouth manager seems to be very switched on when it comes to reselling his assets. However, we haven’t yet explained how he does it?
Buy young, experienced talent
It’s pretty obvious, a young player is worth more than an old player of identical ability. Bournemouth seem to have this one top of their list when it comes to stumping up the cash for a player.
Since their first season in the Premier League, the Cherries have only paid a transfer fee for two players over the age of 25. Of those, one was Asmir Begovic, whose prime as a goalkeeper is likely to be at a higher age than his outfield teammates.
The other was Marc Wilson, who joined Bournemouth for around £2 million in 2016 age 28. The Irishman failed to make a Premier League appearance for the Cherries and was shipped out, first on loan to West Brom and then permanently to Sunderland, for no fee.
A learning curve for Eddie Howe? Since then Bournemouth haven’t signed anyone over 25, and only Diego Rico was over the age of 23. Clearly, those signings will either work from a footballing perspective or retain much of their value to be resold, vindicating their signing from a business perspective.
But age is not the only measure Bournemouth use when signing players. They seek experience beyond a player’s years: for example, in recent seasons they have signed Jordon Ibe, Nathan Ake and Jefferson Lerma all for substantial sums. Each of those were 23 or under at the time, but had several seasons of top-flight experience under their belt (Ibe with Liverpool, Ake with various Premier League clubs and Lerma with Levante). This doesn’t even consider players with Championship experience, as you’ll see shortly.
Dominic Solanke remains an outlier on this front, the young striker having only 21 Premier League appearances (and only five starts) to his name before his £19 million move from Liverpool. If Solanke fails to justify his price tag, Eddie Howe may learn a similar lesson to one taught by Marc Wilson.
Buy the Championship’s top young talent
Youngsters with top-flight experience cost a premium these days, whether you are Bournemouth or Manchester City. A market with far cheaper assets is the Championship – a market Eddie Howe continues to raid time after time.
Already this summer, the Cherries have signed 20-year-old full-back Lloyd Kelly for £13 million after a breakthrough season at Bristol City. In January, they shelled out £12 million to sign Brentford centre-back Chris Mepham.
Last summer, they signed David Brooks, who was a revelation in 2018/19 and was shortlisted for the club’s player of the year award, losing out to Ryan Fraser.
In the summer of 2016, Bournemouth signed Leeds midfielder Lewis Cook for £6 million, a paltry sum in retrospect with the 22-year-old now capped by England.
A further year previously, as they prepared for their first season in the Premier League, Bournemouth signed Tyrone Mings and Benik Afobe from Ipswich and Wolves respectively.
Notice one thing that all of these players have in common – they were all standout performers in Championship sides who missed out on promotion, sometimes narrowly.
It would be crude to describe it as poaching, but in essence, it isn’t far from it. The only real question is why other teams haven’t noticed the consistency with which it works for the Cherries?
A flawless formula?
Far from it, there is no such thing in football. That said, there is no reason why it shouldn’t continue to work for Bournemouth, keeping them in the Premier League as long as they continue to execute transfers to their principles.
Though these principles may seem obvious; in the sense that all teams should follow such incentives, consider how so many teams do not follow such patterns and pursue transfer activity that damages their club. Why so?
The answer is that football is not as simple as can be described in writing, especially not an article this short. Football is impossible to predict or explain, here’s an example of how:
In 2015/16, Bournemouth paid over £35 million to sign forwards Max Gradel, Benik Afobe, Glenn Murray, Lewis Grabban and Lee Tomlin. The same season, they signed Josh King for free. King has been the greatest success story by a mile.
Transfers fees according to Transfermarkt.
