ANDREW Surman says Cherries retaining their Premier League status affects “everyone that works at the club”, adding: “We worked really hard to get here and we want to stay here.”

Cherries are set for a tense run-in, sitting outside the relegation zone by just two points with 11 matches to go, starting with Saturday’s visit of Chelsea (3pm).

Eddie Howe’s men are looking to extend their top-flight stay into a sixth season, having won promotion from the Championship for the first time in the club’s history in 2015.

Surman, 33, has been a constant fixture at the club in that time following his arrival from Norwich City almost seven years ago, playing every game of Cherries’ first Premier League campaign.

Having struggled for game-time this term, the midfielder has recently earned a recall, starting both of the club’s last two matches, defeats at Sheffield United and Burnley, taking his overall appearance tally for Cherries to 226 across two spells.

And having competed for the club as a loanee in League One back in 2005, the Johannesburg-born ace knows just how much Cherries has changed with their rise to the Premier League.

Asked how important it is to stay at England’s elite level for another year, Surman told the Daily Echo: “It’s huge. It affects everyone.

“Not just the players or the manager or the staff, it affects everyone – the fans, everyone that works at the club, the town.

“We worked really hard to get here and we want to stay here.

“We’ve got to keep showing fight, we’ve got to keep fighting and I think if we do that then we’ll have enough to stay up.

“At the end of the day it’s going to come down to fight. Whoever wants it enough in the bottom six will stay up.

“We need to make sure we want it more than anyone else.”

He added: “We’ve never really been in this much of a relegation fight, I guess.

“But we have been here before when we’ve been on a bad run at this time of the season. We’ve got to use our experience. We can’t lose heart.

“It takes everyone in the team to stay positive as a collective unit. We can’t go negative now and start pointing fingers. Everyone’s got to stick together.”

Following the controversial loss at Burnley, where Cherries saw two goals ruled out for handball, boss Howe called on the squad to develop a “siege mentality” to get over the line in the closing months of the season.

“I think we have got it,” said Surman.

“I think you can see especially parts of the last two performances I think we’ve been miles the better team and probably deserved more from both games.

“I think we’ve got that day in, day out. We know that we have to fight.

“We’re down in a relegation battle. We know that, we’re not shying away from that.

“Unfortunately the results themselves don’t reflect that, but I think performances at times have been good enough to come away with the result and we’ve just got to keep doing that.”

Asked if he was confident the squad were not sleepwalking into trouble, Surman replied: “We identified very early on that that’s a possibility and that we need to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Unfortunately it’s happened to us, we’re in a relegation battle but there’s still 11 games left, there’s a lot of points to play for and we’ll stay positive for the next game.”