CHERRIES did not stand on ceremony following their finest season.

Within days of finishing ninth in the Premier League the club was homing in on their main striking target.

And if Jermain Defoe does sign on the dotted line, Cherries will have snared themselves a man who goes about his business in similarly ruthless fashion.

Defoe trades in goals. And plenty of them. Which is why any outside noise about his age – or, more accurately, the wisdom of offering to pay a 34-year-old a reported £65,000 per week salary for the next three years – is exactly that.

It is just noise.

First things first, Eddie Howe is plainly desperately keen for the player to be part of his squad. Buying footballers is a complicated business, with so many variables to consider.

Accordingly, every transfer carries an element of jeopardy but Howe's familiarity with Defoe and his character makes this a deal low on risk.

What's more, the manager's body of work at Dean Court demands that his judgement is backed.

He has elevated Cherries to a place where they are not far off competing for international footballers, in their peak years.

Today, however, they are fighting in a market populated by an aspirational group of clubs below the elite few.

As former England boss Steve McClaren told this paper, Cherries and their progressive counterparts have to accept star signings will come with “baggage” attached.

Without Jack Wilshere's chequered injury history, for example, Arsenal would not have allowed him out of the building.

In Defoe’s case, his advancing years made him a non-starter for the Champions League clique. In truth, Chelsea, Liverpool and the rest might be missing a trick.

Defoe is from the same uber-professional school as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a striker whose life is devoted to the art of goalscoring. He is similarly motivated by a desire to make fools of his knockers, too.

Former Scotland international Richard Gough, a Premier League footballer into his 40th year, once described his body as his “bank”.

Men like Ibrahimovic and Defoe would understand exactly where Gough was coming from. In the Englishman’s case, his epiphany happened early, as a West Ham youngster sharing a training ground with the singular Paolo Di Canio.

“He was the only one who was in on his day off… then on a Saturday, he was the best player,” Defoe would later reflect.

“That always stuck with me. As a young lad, I realised that was no coincidence because this guy did all the right things – gym, nutrition, extra training. I’ve always wanted to be like that and score goals.”

Note that Defoe couldn’t resist mention of scoring goals. He struck 15 of them last season for a Sunderland team utterly devoid of any urgency or creativity: a remarkable feat.

'Remarkable’, in fact, is the word most popularly used in any article discussing Defoe’s likely Cherries wage.

Consider, though, that he is a guaranteed source of goals, the most valuable commodity in the game, and we can turn that description on its head.

This would be a remarkable deal for Cherries. The club earned £123.9m from the Premier League in 2016-17. If Defoe does indeed pick up £65,000 per week that would amount to £3.38m for his first year's work.

That figure equates to 2.73 per cent of Cherries’ top-flight windfall from the recent campaign.

Ibrahimovic collected £2.86m in goal bonuses alone last term. His United earnings weighed in at £21.98m, 15.3 per cent of the club’s Premier League booty.

Beyond the cash, there has been a fundamental footballing concern expressed in some quarters about this move: how does an archetypal penalty-box predator fit into Howe’s dynamic football model?

Joshua King won great acclaim for his 16 goals last season – but he would not have been entrusted with the striker’s job if he didn’t pull his tripe out in his team’s cause.

There would be no problems from Defoe in that respect. You don’t score one goal in every 2.3 starts for Sunderland by mooching around the six-yard box waiting for things to happen.

What’s more, Defoe is prepared to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Former Black Cats boss Dick Advocaat was in the habit of utilising the former Spurs player as a right-sided workhorse; a scuttling James Milner, if you like.

It is hard to imagine Defoe was turning cartwheels when the plan was put to him. But he bought into it nonetheless, schlepping up and down his flank, while retaining his eye for goal.

And here he is today, keeping Wayne Rooney out of the England squad.

Jermain Defoe an expensive gamble? No, he would be an absolute steal.