Cherries for Zabarny. What is Bournemouth?

2023-02-02 14:07 On the last day of the January transfer window in European football, English Bournemouth made a ... Cherries for Zabarny. What is Bournemouth?
02.02.2023, 14:07

On the last day of the January transfer window in European football, English Bournemouth made a deal that has become one of the most significant for the Ukrainian Premier League in recent years - they bought 20-year-old center back Ilya Zabarny from Dynamo.

Ilya Zabarny. Photo: afcb.co.uk

Cherry (nicknamed Bournemouth) signed a contract with the Ukrainian footballer for five and a half years, and the White-Blues will receive 22.7 million euros for the player (according to Transfermarkt) plus a percentage of the resale, moreover, for the inclusion of the last clause in the transfer agreement, the leadership of Dynamo should be praised separately.

What is the current Bournemouth and what are the most significant successes of this club in the past?

A bit of history. The football club from Bournemouth, to which Zabarny has now moved, was founded in 1899 and for a long time was called "Boscom". It acquired its current name in 1972, and plays home matches at the Dean Court Stadium (official sponsorship name of Vitality Stadium), which was opened in 1910 and was last renovated in 2001. The home arena of the Cherries is designed for only 11,464 spectators and is one of the most modest among all the clubs of the current English Premier League.

The vast majority of Bournemouth's history has been played in the lower leagues of English football, predominantly in the Third Division. In 1987, the Cherries won the Third Division (after the reforms it is called League 2 of the English Football League), which was the first significant success for this club throughout its existence. The next high-profile victorious triumph had to wait quite a long time, and it happened at the end of the 2014/15 season, when Bournemouth won the Championship and for the first time in history made it to the elite division of English professional football - the Premier League.

For five seasons in a row, Bournemouth managed, with rather modest opportunities, to maintain a residence permit in the Premier League, and the young mentor of the Cherries, Eddie Howe, was rightly considered the father of this miracle in the press and the expert community. This coach spent many years at the club, and left it after the end of the 2019/20 season, in which he could not save Bournemouth from relegation to the Championship. Howe is currently working with Newcastle, where he has the opportunity to count on much more solid economic resources of the owners of this club, but Bournemouth returned to the Premier League at the end of the last season, when, under the leadership of Scott Parker, they finished second in the Championship.

It was with Parker as the head coach of Bournemouth that he started the current season in the Premier League, and immediately with a victory over Aston Villa (2: 0). However, this was followed by three devastating defeats from the giants - Manchester City (0:4), Arsenal (0:3) and Liverpool (0:9), which cost Parker the position ... From the end of December 2022 Scott is already working as a mentor for Belgian Club Brugge.

Ownership structure. Until recently, Bournemouth was owned by British businessman of Russian origin Maxim Demin. In 2011, he became one of the club's shareholders, having spent 850 thousand pounds (for 50% of the shares) on this, but over time he increased his ownership of the football asset to 100%. Demin made his fortune through his activities in the petrochemical industry. In particular, the entrepreneur previously served as financial adviser to the General Director of Tatneft.

After the start of the full-scale phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Demin avoided the imposition of sanctions by the British government, as he managed to acquire the citizenship of this country by that time. However, at the end of 2022, the entrepreneur nevertheless decided to sell Bournemouth, which fell into the hands of 78-year-old American businessman Bill Foley, who by that time already owned the Vegas Golden Knights NHL team.

Officially, the process of transferring the rights to Bournemouth from Demin to Foley took place in December last year, and the purchase of the Cherries cost the American £100 million.

Notably, on January 13, 2023, Foley acquired a significant minority stake in French Ligue 1 club Lorient, creating a partnership with Bournemouth.

Main coach. At the moment, Bournemouth's mentor is the 39-year-old ex-midfielder of Portsmouth, Middlesbrough and a number of other teams Gary O'Neill. In the summer of 2019, he hung up his boots, and a year later he joined the headquarters of Liverpool U-23 as one of the head coach's assistants. O'Neal did not even work a season in the Reds' camp, having received and accepted in February 2021 an offer to join Scott Parker's coaching staff at Bournemouth.

After the resignation of his ex-boss, which took place on August 30, 2022, it was O'Neal who first became the acting head coach of the Cherries, and at the end of November he signed a full-fledged contract with the club for a year and a half.

For the time being, it is extremely premature to talk about O'Neill's achievements and prospects, because this specialist, in fact, is just starting an independent path in such a difficult field as coaching...

The composition of the team and competitors of Zabarny. Bournemouth's current squad is the least expensive of all English Premier League clubs in terms of aggregate value on Transfermarkt. In particular, all 27 players of the first team of the Cherries combined are estimated by specialists at 226.7 million euros, which is more than four and a half times less than that of the leader of the rating - Manchester City (1.05 billion euros).

Nominally, the most expensive player of the current Bournemouth is 22-year-old Ivorian Hamed Traore. His transfer fee is 18 million euros. It is noteworthy that the Cherry African midfielder, as in the case of Zabarny, was signed on the last day of the January 2023 transfer window. But, unlike the Ukrainian, Traore was not bought out, but only rented from Sassuolo for six months, albeit with an obligation (with conditions) to further buy out for 30 million euros.

The most famous players of Bournemouth are the 33-year-old ex-goalkeeper of Juventus, Barcelona and Valencia Neto, as well as the 25-year-old ex-forward of Chelsea and Liverpool Dominic Solanke. The first Cherries were signed in August last year as a free agent, but for the second one they paid Liverpool more than 21 million euros in January 2019, and since then Solanke has played 157 matches for Bournemouth in all competitions, scoring 53 the ball and giving 23 assists.

As for Zabarny's direct competitors in the position of a central defender, here the main attention should be paid to 25-year-old Chris Mepham and 29-year-old Jack Stevens. The first one has played significantly more matches in the Premier League this season (16), while the second one is only loaned from Southampton, and therefore O'Neal does not make a serious bet on him, which is proved by only 6 matches played by Stevens in the Premier League. -league-2022/23.

Both Mepham and Stevens are right-footed centre-backs, and therefore they should be considered as Zabarny's main competitors. But also in Bournemouth in the center of defense (mainly on the left) is 24-year-old team captain Lloyd Kelly, who, if necessary, is also replaced there by left-footed center back Marcos Senesi, for the signing of which the Cherries gave Feyenoord 15 million euros last summer .

Tactics and game style. Bournemouth, under O'Neill, mostly uses the traditional 4-4-2 formation. What is true, the coach started with 4-2-3-1 and even 5-3-2, but quickly decided that the maximum simplicity in working on the field is exactly what he wants to see from his players in the first place.

Bournemouth are the team that have conceded the most so far this season in the Premier League with 42 goals. Also, the Cherries are in the top 3 of the English elite championship in terms of squad stability - their head coach Gary O'Neill made only 67 substitutions in 20 matches, which is only more than West Ham (62) and the same as Everton (67) vs Manchester City (67).

O'Neill's wards are not at all striving for total control of the ball. On the contrary, this team can be called maximally focused on counterattacks and a quick transition from defense to attack with the help of vertical passes. Bournemouth have an average possession percentage per 90 minutes of 41.3, which is only higher than Nottingham Forest (39.8%) in the 2022/23 Premier League. It is logical that the Cherries also have one of the lowest pass rates in the championship - 6853, again only ahead of Nottingham Forest (6570), and almost twice losing to the leader of the nomination Manchester City (13075).

Without the ability to control the ball a lot and often go into positional attacks, Bournemouth players have to work hard in defense. As of the current moment, the Cherries are the leaders of the season in the Premier League in blocked shots of the opponent (95), interceptions of the ball (978), take the fifth place in participation in riding martial arts (758). In addition, it was on Bournemouth's goal that the opponents delivered the most shots (299), compared to other teams.

Given the latest facts, Zabarny's move to Bournemouth will allow the 20-year-old Ukrainian to experience the full charm of performances at the level of the English Premier League. If the ex-leader of the defense of Dynamo can prove the right to play in the base (and not for the fact that the club paid such serious money to the people of Kiev to marinate Zabarny on the bench), then he will have to play very quickly with partners in the defense line and work on the field with the highest degree of dedication in literally every game episode. Ilya was practically completely deprived of this in the composition of Dynamo, which in the UPL in most matches acted from the position of an absolute favorite, and therefore such a level of intensity and concentration can help Zabarny quickly show even more significant progress.

It is also worth noting that Bournemouth is able to profitably resell central defenders who have shown themselves well in the “cherries” camp. There are two representatives of this role in the top 3 clubs in terms of record outgoing transfers at once - Tyrone Mings (3rd place), who moved to Aston Villa in the summer of 2019 for 22.3 million euros, and Nathan Ake (1st place) , who left for Manchester City in the summer of 2020 for 45.3 million euros.

It is precisely in view of the latest trend that it is very important that the Dynamo bosses were able to prescribe 20% of the subsequent resale amount in the contract for the transfer of Zabarny to Bournemouth. As you can see, if a Ukrainian successfully plays in the Premier League, we can talk about very, very decent money...

Alexey SLIVCHENKO

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