EDDIE Mitchell last night insisted a £6million loan registered to AFC Bournemouth was needed to drive the club forward.

The Cherries chairman also reassured supporters that the club was under no pressure to pay back the funding from Wintel Petrochemicals Ltd.

While Mitchell declined to confirm whether the funds had come from Cherries co-owner Maxim Demin, a Mr M V Demin is listed online as a director of Wintel.

According to Companies House, the loan, secured with a charge on land lying to the north east of Kings Park Drive in Kings Park, was given to the club by Wintel last month.

Cherries chief Mitchell told the Daily Echo: “The loan is to develop the ground, which is what people can see we have been doing, to buy players and pay their wages. It doesn’t come cheap to get the type of players we have got.

“If you borrow money from somebody, one would like to think you would pay it back at some time. But we are not under pressure to pay it back at all at the moment.

“Nobody has given us a timescale on the loan, we are servicing the loan and one would like to think the loan is there indefinitely.

“In an ideal situation, like mortgages or other sorts of loans, you would rather not have them.

“But if you want to develop – it is what I have done all my life – then you need to have money to do it.”

Mitchell added: “We have bought players, we continue to fund and pay players’ wages and we pay the rent on time, which are things that never used to happen. It can hardly be judged we are now in financial difficulty – far from it.”