by Joey Davies
@theonejoeydSwindon Town's financial situation had me intrigued yesterday. Not just because they are a serious adversary to Tranmere's attempts to reach the Championship, but because of one particular transfer deal that took place even after a new consortium purchased the club.
Matt Ritchie, arguably one of League One's best players, left the County Ground. Not for a higher level, but to promotion rivals Bournemouth, a side just a point behind the Robins in the table. Swindon, one of the most expensively assembled outfits in the third tier, had lost its best player to an even more expensively created one!
Bournemouth were a club in administration just four seasons ago and started the 2008-09 campaign in League Two on -17, miraculously avoiding the drop into non-league and then recovering to win promotion the season later with a shoestring team. Eddie Howe was hot stuff in managerial terms, and Burnley picked him up halfway through the 2010-11 season when he had guided the Cherries to second spot- rubbing shoulders with much bigger spenders.
In the time he was up in the Championship with the Clarets, a bunch of Russians have got involved at Dean Court and I'd imagine Bournemouth's wage bill is now way above the £6m mark. Indeed, these huge resources are almost certainly what convinced Howe to drop down a division and return 'home'.
Maxim Demin - the man behind the investment, wants to have a bit of fun as one of his mates did the same thing in Germany taking Fortuna Dusseldorf up from the lower divisions to the Bundesliga and it seems a repeat here is the primary goal- however Darragh MacAnthony wanted to have the same fun at Peterborough and is finding that the lower reaches of the Championship are a ceiling for clubs of that size unless ridiculous pounds, or roubles in this case, are thrown in the manager's face.
This demonstrates what clubs like Tranmere are up against- Bournemouth have gone from a Portsmouth to a Man City in the space of three years and holding them off for promotion would be a miraculous triumph in the background of a huge disadvantage.
For Cherries fans' sake, I hope these investors do not get bored because without them that wage bill would be simply unsustainable, and the risk of them following a road parallel to a club not too geographically far away would become a very realistic scenario.
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