Silly season starts early

We have not even reached the end of the season yet and the gossip columns are already going crazy with highlighting Charlie Austin to AFCB and Matt Ritchie being a target for Hull City. It's good to talk of course and to mark out possible key signings, but I hate to tell everyone - the season is not over yet and AFCB's players have the biggest seven games to play in their careers to date.

That is the reality. I know Eddie Howe will be telling the players they can forget about holidays and transfer moves at the moment. If they are not 100 per cent focused on the task ahead of them, two weeks in the city of Hull might be their next reward and not Dubai. AFCB's players seem to have their heads screwed on though, and it is perhaps more a reflection on the journalists not having much to say until the football gets underway again.

Matt's in demand - who's next?

Still there is likely to be some movement of players both in and out. The months of June and July could be very busy, but our manager is not going to have much time before he is being questioned about player availability by the sound of it even if the Cherries do go up. The excitement about the Cherries squad is not just that they are good players but that so many of them are British home-grown players and with all the chatter in the last week about how Greg Dyke, chairlam of the FA, would like to bring in new rules to limit the amount of foreign players in the Premier League, all of a sudden those teams that are in and around the top of the Championship probably look like chests of gold to those already in the promised land.

Rumours are always going to be around, but one note of caution I should mention is that Birmingham City have been looking to see who they could replace Demarai Gray with should he chose to leave the Blues in the summer. Whether that indicates that AFCB are still keen on the young international is hard to say but if AFCB can't hold on to Ritchie it wouldn't be a great surprise to see Demarai Gray on the south coast at some point during the summer. Silly season - it's not too far away. 

Cherry Chimes April Newsletter - out tomorrow!

Tomorrow we'll be releasing the Cherry Chimes' April Newsletter which picks over the top stories from the blog in March.

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