Bournemouth supervisor Andoni Iraola has described the battle of feelings he felt when promoting Dominic Solanke in the summertime to Tottenham for £65m, after such a profitable season on the Vitality Stadium.
Having completed with 48 factors within the 2023/24 season, Bournemouth recorded their best-ever tally within the English high flight. Solanke proved an enormous half in that success, although, scoring 19 Premier League objectives, so shedding him definitely made issues harder originally of this marketing campaign.
Regardless, the membership had been anticipating attention-grabbing of their star striker.
Bournemouth boss Iraola blissful for Solanke to problem himself
“It was all the time a robust risk that he’d go away,” Iraola concedes to FourFourTwo. “Not after simply the objectives that he scored, however the performances he had final season. He was so constant.”
The very fact the transfer went by way of on August 10, only a week earlier than the beginning of the season, did make issues tougher to take care of. However regardless of shedding such an entire striker, Iraola virtually welcomed the transfer – for Solanke, as a lot as something.
“He wasn’t known as up for the Euros, and that didn’t actually assist us – it made it arduous to persuade Dom to remain,” Iraola provides.
“There’s a part of you as a coach the place clearly you don’t need to lose him as a result of your job turns into tougher. However there’s part of you that wishes him to go to the next stage, to do properly and get the popularity he deserves. Regardless that he performs for Spurs, we’re all nonetheless cheering for him and we’re glad he’s again within the nationwide workforce.
“It’s a problem for us all. Now we have to interchange not simply his objectives however every part he gave to us with completely different sorts of gamers. Everybody has to contribute.”
Bournemouth have changed Solanke properly, with Evanilson arriving for a club-record £40m. With the Brazilian up entrance and different gamers enhancing, the Cherries are undoubtedly preventing for Europe and are properly on target for a fair bigger factors haul than their best-ever final time period – breaking the 50-point barrier is definitely close by.