Really interesting to see the details on the website about the work we're currently undertaking at Dean Court (details mostly behind the pay wall grrrr) The existing training ground behind Dean Court is being massively expanded with an 11,000 square foot construction. It'll provide the club with much needed new office space, loads of new medical and sports science facilities for the players, player and staff lounge space, an indoor 3G facility, video analysis room etc. All to upgrade and replace the similar but smaller scale of these facilities in the main stadium itself. Club aren't saying how much it's costing.. Currently the groundwork is underway, and the structure itself is modular and comes in bits early next month. Expected to be opened for use just before the season kicks off (talk about not messing around!) The space saved inside DC can be re-purposed (assuming we stay there long term?). The internals of the East Stand are being almost totally ripped out. New facilities for disabled fans, upgrade to the gym, and more medical and sport science stuff. And then there's new floodlights going in, 5 TV studios being built between the main and east stands for Sky, and another new indoor 3G pitch for the players as well. Finally, a proper modern 21st century stadium and training ground for the club. Shame about the capacity! But one thing at a time...
As much as I know you got to spend money on players to try and stay up its good to see Bournemouth spend money on investments like this, hopefully a decent amount of money will be kept back to redelovopment Dean Court aswell into a stadium that wont look out of place in the Premiership or Championship in the future.
Unbelievable they haven't tried increasing the capacity a bit. I'd have thought they'd have got it up to atleast 15K for this season. Very strange and hardly any f***er will be able to get a ticket now.
I don't think it's particularly strange, improve the off the field stuff first to plan for the long term, then the stadium to attract new fans. Far more sensible than the way the cess pit down the road did it by throwing money at players they couldn't afford
11,700 though...that's ****in' dreadful. They'd have probably averaged 20K plus if they'd had the room. This could well be their only ever season in the sun of the top flight so whilst spending on the infra-structure is to be commended I really think they should have made a real effort to up the capacity a bit. There'll be thousands unable to get in.
At the same time though, if we fell back to the bottom end of the Championship we'd be averaging 6/7k again. Why would we need a ground with 15k then? Build the squad first, establish ourselves, then improve/expand the infrastructure. Far more important to actually be in the PL than to be prepared for it.
The only club in the country outside of the Premier League last season to sell out week in week out were Norwich City.
