Bond forced to become a loan ranger

The strange air of optimism I felt going into the season at Dean Court is quickly ebbing away.

I know we were deducted 17 points heading into the League Two campaign, but we had kept the majority of our squad from last year together and I genuinely felt if we got off to a good start and knocked off the points deduction quickly a season of blissful midtable anonymity lay ahead.

But after taking just two points from the first three games, added to the news last year’s top scorer Jo Kuffour is likely to head to Bristol Rovers for a knock down fee of £60,000, I am beginning to feel we might be in for a worryingly more tense campaign.

Manager Kevin Bond has openly admitted in the local press that he is struggling to attract players to a club in our situation and he seems destined to rely on loan signings to flesh out our threadbare squad.

Last season’s poor start was largely down to the large number of loan players on our books as they struggled to gel and a few could have been accused of not playing more for themselves than with total commitment to the Bournemouth cause.

Bond could be accused of making the same mistake twice as he has already made five loan signings this summer but he seems to be taking a more considered method.

Rather than the scatter gun approach he adopted last term, he has had players down to look at them before signing or signed them initially on short term deals with a view to the extension.

It is also worth mentioning two of the stars of our fantastic run at the end of the last campaign were rent-a-players – Maxi Gradel, a tricky Ivorian winger from Leicester who became a cult hero, and David Forde, a goalkeeper from Cardiff.

First signs of some of Bond’s new recruits look encouraging as well.

Peterborough keeper Shwan Jalal is reportedly already looking to convert his loan into permanent deal after a series of steady performances between the posts.

Defender Joel Ward, from Portsmouth, also looks a tidy defender - even if he did appear somewhat ruffled by the physical approach taken by Aldershot’s forwards during our trip to the Recreation Ground.

He has probably yet to experience that kind of opponent at youth or reserve team level and should learn.

Perhaps our most intriguing loanee is 18-year-old Leicester centre forward Reneil ‘Ricky’ Sappleton.

Built like a young Emile Heskey, he does unfortunately share the England forward’s first touch – or lack of – but he does also possess the strength and power that made ‘Big Em’ such a prospect in his youth.

He also has a phenomenal goalscoring record at youth and reserve level and if he can adapt to live in the basement division he could go some way to fulfilling the gap created by Kuffour’s absence.

I have no doubt Bond would rather get a long term prospect on a permanent deal than these temporary solutions but it is a case of needs must at this level and let’s not forget the exploits of a certain Jermain Defoe on loan on the south coast.