It’s no more a dream as Bournemouth wake up to top-flight reality

Bournemouth players celebrate their 3-0 win over Bolton Wanderers on Monday that all but ensured their promotion to the Premier League.

AFP/LondonBournemouth are on the verge of sealing promotion to the Premier League for the first time in the club’s history after Monday’s 3-0 victory over Bolton. Eddie Howe’s side brushed aside Wanderers thanks to goals from Marc Pugh, Matt Ritchie and Callum Wilson at Dean Court and they now sit three points clear of third-placed Middlesbrough with only one game to play. The Cherries will be guaranteed of a place in the English top-flight if they take at least one point from their trip to Charlton on Saturday or if Middlesbrough fail to beat Brighton. Even if Bournemouth lose and Middlesbrough win it would still take an extraordinary sequence of events for the team from the south-coast to be denied promotion as they have a vastly superior goal difference of +50 against Middlesbrough’s +31. Bournemouth could also finish as the winners of the Championship if they better the result of already-promoted leaders Watford, who hold a one-point advantage over the Cherries and host Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday. “I’m an eternal pessimist but it would take some blow up from this position not to make it. We have one more game and we want to finish on a high,” Howe said. “This club was heading nowhere, it was heading out of business and to make such a quick turnaround is impressive. You don’t achieve anything on your own. It has taken a monumental effort from the players and coaching staff.” Regardless of whether they finish with silverware or not, promotion from the second tier will still be a remarkable achievement for Bournemouth, who came close to going into liquidation on three occasions in six months only seven years ago. With a crowd capacity of only 11,700, Bournemouth, whose previous highest ever finish was 10th in the second tier last season, would rank as by far the smallest club in the Premier League next season. But their rise from obscurity to the brink of rubbing shoulders with the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United suggests it would be unwise to bet against them finding a way to survive among the elite. They started the 2008-09 season in the fourth tier with a 17-point penalty, yet through the astute management of the long-serving Howe and the subsequent investment of Russian benefactor Maxim Demin, who has bankrolled the club since 2011, Bournemouth have defied the odds to put the Premier League’s riches within touching distance.For Bournemouth chairman Jeff Mostyn, it is a journey that began in 2008 when he wrote a 100,000-pound ($152,000) cheque to save the club from liquidation. “Six years ago we were on the edge of abyss,” Mostyn said yesterday. “We’ve climbed right through the leagues and into the Premier League.  It’s just incredible. I don’t think anybody, not even the craziest optimist, would ever have thought this was possible. The reality is we are going to be rubbing shoulders with football’s glitterati next season and we’ll do ourselves proud.” Manager Howe has been praised for his achievement, having been a manager for only six years. “This club was on its knees six years ago, we had nothing,” Howe said. “A group of supporters put their money in their pockets to keep the club alive and they are reaping the rewards. It is the club I watched as a kid, the club that gave me an opportunity in the game as a player and a manager. “It shouldn’t be them thanking me, it should be me thanking them. It is a family club and deserves its moment in the sun. It is never a journey we expected to go on but through some hard work and some investment we managed to do it. The players have been magnificent and it is an achievement they deserve.” Mostyn said he was confident they were capable of surviving in the Premier League. “We are going up with Watford and we’ve got four points from them this year, we beat QPR last year and we should have got more points from Burnley,” he said. “The way we play football we’ll enhance the Premier League and I think of any team that has been promoted in recent years, we have as much chance as any of staying up.”