AFC Bournemouth’s Transfer Window

After writing about Southampton’s transfer business, I didn’t feel like stopping so I thought I would analyze a few more teams.  I decided to focus on other local teams (local to Southampton, not local to me).

I should mention that I have no emotional investment in the local rivalries that are so important to English Football fans.  I want Southampton to win because Southampton is my team, but I do not hate Portsmouth.  I hate the Los Angeles Dodges, the Dallas Cowboys, the LA/St. Louis Rams, and the USC Trojans, not some English football team I have never seen play.  Moreover, the intensity of my hatred, even for the Dodgers, seems to be significantly less than that felt by Southampton fans for Portsmouth. For example, I do not want the Los Angeles Dodgers to go out of business. I merely want them to lose—a lot.  This year they are not cooperating.

Moreover, I think it would be good for Southampton if Bournemouth and/or Brighton were promoted to the BPL.  It would replace a long away trip with a shorter trip and it would increase local interest in both teams.  The rivalry would be healthy.  Both teams would undoubtedly sell out their games against each other so everyone be better off.  Why any Southampton fan would prefer Sunderland or Stoke to be in the BPL over Bournemouth or Brighton is beyond me.  But again, I am American so what do I know.

I recognize that most of my readers will know more about Bournemouth than I do.  However, I am doing these analyses as a personal experiment to see how my evaluation process works on a team I know very little about.  I do not believe that I will offer any brilliant new insights to my readers.  If I happen to stumble across any brilliant insights, please let me know.  For this reason, I am simply posting these blogs without mentioning them in my ongoing “Hey I have posted a new blog” threads in the various Southampton forums.  That being said, I assume that when I get around to discussing Portsmouth someone will still get upset with me.

As always, I am using information from Football Manager 2014 and Transfermarkt. I consulted Wikipedia as well a number of other sources.  Bournemouth seemed to have a number of players out on loan last season who went back out on loan again this season.  I will ignore them.

INCOMING TRANSFERS

Player                                   CA                          PA                          Transfer Fee (in millions of pounds)

Callum Wilson                   107                         -7                            3.26

Andrew Surman                125                         136                         0.792

Junior Stanislas                  114                         137                         0.880

Dan Gosling                        115                         135                         1.32

OUTGOING TRANSFERS

Lewis Grabban                  118                         130                          3.26

Shwan Jalal                        106                         115                          free

Stephen Purches                 83                           98                          retired

Richard Hughes                   89                         130                          retired

It appears, based upon FM numbers, that Bournemouth has strengthened their side—particularly since Callum Wilson is viewed as a top prospect who has already scored five goals this season.  Very likely Bournemouth considers him to be much better than a 107 and the transfer to a higher division will likely result in him being rated higher in FM 2015.  Bournemouth has also had a net spend which might very well have been covered by their share of the Lallana money.

The departed Lewis Grabban has also been scoring for Norwich, who, apparently, purchased him by activating a 3 million pound release clause.   Presumably, Norwich thinks that Grabban can help get them back into the BPL so they must believe that he is better than a 118.
Transfermarkt values the entire Bournemouth roster at 14.17 million pounds ranking 17^th in the Championship.  For comparison, Burnley is valued at 37.62 million pounds, ranking last in the BPL.

STARTING ELEVEN

I have assumed a 4-4-2 formation even though Bournemouth played a 4-5-1 in their last game.  These teams are the best teams using FM’s CA, not necessarily the best real teams.  Bouremouth seems to rotate the squad a lot so lesser ranked players get playing time.  For example, Charlie Daniels (CA 108) started over Ian Harte (CA 114) in the last game.  In fact, in their last game Bournemouth started several younger, but lower rated players. 

Position                                Last year(CA)                     This year(CA)

G                                             Lee Camp 122                    122

LB                                           Ian Harte 114                     114

CB                                           Elliot Ward 115                  115

CB                                           Steve Cook 113                 113

RB                                           Adam Smith 115               115

LM                                          Marc Pugh 109                  Adam Surman 125

CM                                         Harry Arter 113                 113

CM                                         Eunan O’Kane 110           Dan Gosling 115

RM                                         Matt Ritchie 121               121

ST                                           Yann Kermorgant 120     120

ST                                           Lewis Grabban 118          Tokelo Rantie 117

The best eleven shows improvement of 20 CA over last year but the only significant improvement is at left midfielder.  They seem to have done a good job of holding onto their better players, losing only one significant player.  Of course, this may just mean that the bigger teams did not think any of their players were worth picking up.

Since I have not evaluated other Championship teams, I cannot say whether this team is even close to being good enough to be promoted, but it would certainly be nowhere near good enough to avoid relegation from the BPL.