CHERRIES chief executive Neill Blake says the prospect of increasing capacity at the Vitality Stadium will be monitored throughout the season.

The Dorset club kicks-off an historic first campaign in the Premier League with a sell-out showdown against Aston Villa on Saturday.

And the match will see Cherries carve their own piece of history by having the smallest stadium with the lowest capacity to stage Premier League football.

Cherries shelved plans to increase their current capacity of 11,700 after winning the Championship last season due to time constraints and as they felt it would not have been financially viable.

In an interview in the Daily Echo’s 32-page season preview, which will be published on Thursday, Blake said: “It would not have been feasible for this season.

“Due to the size of the project, we would have had to have made decisions in December/January and we couldn’t make a call on going up so early. Our sole focus was on investing in the first team and giving the manager as much help as we could.

“We didn’t want to presume we were going to go up. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and if we had known then, we would have started. Meetings are planned throughout the season and stadium development will be on the agenda.”

Club owner Maxim Demin funded around £6million in stadium improvements over the summer to get Dean Court to meet Premier League requirements.

See Thursday’s Cherries supplement in the Daily Echo for an in-depth interview with Neill Blake.