Cherries chat: The longest of summers

The Carling Cup first round has been drawn, full league fixtures are revealed on Monday and most fans are starting to get excited about the 2008/9 season.

For Bournemouth fans though the new season still feels a very long way away.

The Cherries have now been in administration for 18 weeks and the lack of progress towards a rescue package is becoming alarming.

Before we begin life in League Two and take on FA Cup finalists Cardiff in the Carling Cup there is still an awful lot that needs to be sorted.

Eight of our squad are out of contract and even those of them who want to sign on for another year are only able to agree a deal in principle.

That leaves us with, by my reckoning, a seven-man first team squad at the moment and that includes three youth players who were promoted to the first team squad this summer.

Several of the players whose contracts are up are being linked with other clubs, including industrious midfielders Danny Holland and Shaun Cooper.

Defender Josh Gowling has revealed he has had offers from three other clubs to consider.
Gowling has been dubbed ‘Rio’ by the Cherries faithful due to his ‘corn roll’ haircut once sported by England and Manchester United centre back Ferdinand.

It is not the only thing they have in common as, while I’m not saying Gowling is in Rio’s class, his greatest weakness is also a tendency to switch off at the back.

Like Ferdinand he is a great athlete, particularly at this level, but while the United star has grown up and cut out those lapses last season Josh seemed more error prone than ever at the start of the campaign.

He came good though as we put on our run of six wins and a draw at the end of the season and had three monumental performances against three forwards who in my view were the just about best in the division last year.

Against the powerful Jason Scotland of Swansea, Bristol Rovers’ muscular Rickie Lambert and the lighting sharp Nicky Maynard from Crewe Gowling was outstanding and hardly put a foot wrong.

It just adds to the theory that he only performs at his best when he is concentrating and perhaps he would be better off not coming down to the fourth tier with us where his lackadaisical side may come to the fore once more.

The problem is that for every player that leaves we need to find a replacement fast – unless we end up relying on a side packed full of loan players and we proved last season that didn’t work.

The only other option is to see whether teams in League Two fancy taking us on in a five-a-side.