Semenyo scenario underlines the nonsense of naive Bournemouth’s seven-word declaration | OneFootball

It was around two-and-a-half years ago when Bill Foley outlined his vision for Bournemouth to qualify for Europe, to grow out of the perennial “worry about avoiding relegation” and instead “move way up the table”.

But ultimately the American businessman, who completed his takeover of the Cherries only a few months before, wanted them to become “not a stepping stone but a destination”.

Since then, Bournemouth have replaced Gary O’Neil with Andoni Iraola, finished 12th and then 9th, broken their Premier League points record in consecutive seasons and threatened the very foundations upon which the elite have built.

They have also generated hundreds of millions of pounds in selling players to Spurs, Real Madrid, Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain, with January to be dominated by the race for one of the few remaining legitimate jewels in their crown.

“Not a stepping stone but a destination,” is clearly far easier said than done. And a stance entirely undermined by the proliferation of release clauses Bournemouth are increasingly leaning upon.

Antoine Semenyo will likely be sold for £65m next month, a significant mark-up from the £10m they spent to sign him three years ago. It represents an undoubted success in their model, but also a serious problem in an approach which relies on unearthing such quality as quickly as Bournemouth sell it.

Losing a player who has scored or assisted almost half their total Premier League goals in the middle of the season is thoroughly sub-optimal. The closest player to Semenyo’s contribution of 11 is Marcus Tavernier, whose six includes a penalty.

It is not really a loss of personnel that a team in 14th and on a winless run of eight games can afford.

Yet it is baked into this player trading framework, with Foley’s naivety in genuinely believing “in terms of the UK, Bournemouth is about as good as it gets in terms of a location” shining through.

“My job is to really make sure we have an environment that attracts good players and is a situation where those players want to stay and don’t want to move on,” Foley said in March, ludicrously adding that “we can compete salary wise with just about anybody”.

Bur as competitive as Bournemouth can be on the pitch, there will forever be a ceiling on what they can do off it, especially with a template predicated on forever selling their best players, which itself is something Iraola will only humour for so long.

And even that on-pitch competitiveness has waned to the extent that Burnley can snatch a point from the Vitality Stadium to leave Bournemouth as low as they have been at this stage of a Premier League season since relegation battles were an accepted part of their top-flight life.

Moving past that takes more than a couple of campaigns of upward mobility. Bournemouth are no different; they are building on quicksand and require perfection in every decision to keep it going.

The Semenyo scenario is proof – not that it were needed – that moving up or indeed down the table rarely impacts a club’s place in the natural football food chain. And Bournemouth, like any other challenger to the elite, are always far likelier to lose their footing than simply keep climbing.