MIDFIELD man Andrew Surman insists Cherries should relish the attention following Saturday’s record-breaking 8-0 triumph over Birmingham City.

Cherries recorded the biggest post-war away win in the second tier at St Andrew’s thanks to goals from Brett Pitman, Callum Wilson, Matt Ritchie, Marc Pugh (3) and Tokelo Rantie (2).

The result – Cherries’ biggest Football League victory and Birmingham’s largest home defeat in their 139-year history – flagged up the club’s fine run of recent form with Surman happy to strike fear into the Championship’s challengers.

“Maybe it will make teams sit up and take notice a bit more now,” said Surman.

“We'll take that as a positive and bring it on. It's good to have that respect from teams and we want to go into games with other teams possibly fearing us.

“We can only worry about what we're doing, we can't switch our focus to what anyone else is doing or thinking. Okay, it was 8-0, but to us it was another three points and that was what we came for.

"The result has gone now, we enjoyed it on the day but we have to keep looking forward. If other teams choose to focus on that result, that’s up to them.”

It was not the first time Surman had been involved in a south-coast club trouncing a Midlands opponent in their own backyard having scored in Southampton’s 6-0 stuffing of Wolves in March 2007.

But even the 28-year-old admitted he remained stunned by the nature of the biggest scoreline of his career at Birmingham.

“It still hasn't quite sunk in to be honest,” he added. “We went into the game with a lot of confidence. Birmingham had only won one game in 24 at home and we knew if we started well then we should come out with the right result.

“But I don't think anyone ever imagined we would come away with an 8-0 win. In the first half, while we were 3-0 up, we were probably a little bit disappointed that we didn't play as well as we could have but we upped it second half and got our rewards.”