Jubilant Cherries turn thoughts to the top flight

BOURNEMOUTH, England (Reuters) - While a battery of champagne corks continued popping into Tuesday, heralding Bournemouth's promotion to the Premier League, the chairman of the tiny south-coast club turned his mind to more prosaic matters.

Soccer-Jubilant Cherries turn thoughts to the top flight

(Reuters)





"We need to upgrade the press box," a bleary-eyed Jeff Mostyn smiled. "We need 100 seats hard-wired. We used to have one reporter from the Bournemouth Echo... last night the world's media were here."

With one match to go -- at Charlton Athletic -- only an unthinkable result can deprive the Cherries of a seat at the mega-rich top table of English football, a fact their hosts on Saturday acknowledged with a cheeky message on their Twitter feed.

"Bournemouth celebrating like they've completely ruled out a 19-0 defeat at The Valley on Saturday. We'll see..." read the Addicks' tongue-in-cheek message.

Saturday's match will rubber-stamp an extraordinary rise which will see Bournemouth play in the elite tier for the first time in their 116-year history.

Nothing could have been farther from their thoughts six years ago when the club almost went out of existence with crippling debts.

Since 2009, though, they have flourished under the investment of chairman Mostyn, Russian owner Maxim Demin and with 37-year-old manager Eddie Howe at the helm.

"His desire is to manage a Premier League club, and the miracle has happened," Mostyn said of Howe.

"He's been here since he was 10. Now that we are in the Premier League, subject to the final game, I think he will go from strength to strength and I can't see him wanting to leave his club," Mostyn added, before acknowledging "The more I'm bigging him up, the more desire others will have to take him."

As perhaps befits a man who helped drag a club from the edge of bankruptcy, Mostyn's thoughts returned to the more basic realities of life at the top.

"We need to improve floodlights to make it suitable for high resolution cameras so there's no flicker," he said. "It is strange me using this terminology -- talking about worldwide coverage.

"For me this is achieving the impossible. For all football fans, this is the perfect story and hopefully it gives hope for every club that you can come back from oblivion and get to the Premier League."

Promotion brings with it a cash boost of about 120 million pounds, enough to soften any blow for the newest members of the footballing elite and their floodlight bill.





(Reporting by Ossian Shine; Editing by Ken Ferris)


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