CHAIRMAN Bill Foley has offered up an insight into the thinking behind Cherries’ future stadium plans.

In an interview with the Athletic, the American businessman spoke about weighing up the pros and cons of expanding their current facilities at Dean Court, with Vitality Stadium the smallest ground in the Premier League with a capacity of 11,307.

Potential expansion would involve renovating the South Stand, a temporary structure erected in 2013. The club recently applied to retain the stand for another five years, taking it up to the end of their current lease at the Vitality.

Foley explained: “The best approach is to try to build a new stadium and to do it economically, spend £80-90million , with the right hospitality and about 20,000 seats.

“We don’t need much more than that but we do need to open up our ticketing to new fans.

“They’ve been using a points system until now — you get a point for attending a game — but that just means everyone in the stadium looks like me: old, white guys. We want younger people.

“The tickets aren’t that expensive but to widen our fanbase we need to expand. We’re very intent on accomplishing that mission.”

One of the stumbling blocks to building a new ground is that fact that precious land around the Vitality is taken up by Cherries’ current training facilities.

Work on their new training complex at Canford Magna is well underway, with Foley hoping for Cherries to be using the facility by the Autumn of 2024.

He continued: “I’m happy with where we’re going but the reality is we need a new stadium.

“Our other gating issue is that our current training ground is where the stadium will go.

“That means we need to get our new training facility built and move our first team, academy and women’s team there. It’s north of Bournemouth.We have the space, we have 57 acres, and we’ve built one pitch.

“We’re building the indoor pitch right now and we’re just about to start the training facility. It should be ready in the fall of 2024.

“That will mean we can move our business operations to where the training facility is now so we can work on our stadium plan and have more room for hospitality at the stadium.

“Our offices are taking up space that we should be selling.”

There is also confidence that due to the sporting covenant on the land at Dean Court, Cherries hold all the cards in negotiations with current landlords Structadene.

Foley explained: “We have an advantage because it can only be a stadium and we only have five years on our lease.

“The clock is ticking. We know they’ll sell us the stadium at a reasonable price and that price gets more reasonable the longer we wait.

“If we move out, I guess they could go back to the council and say ‘We’ll tear it down and build affordable housing’, which is fine but that could take a while, so time is on our side.”