What does Eddie see in Glenn Murray?

There are several news reports led by South London Today linking AFC Bournemouth with a £3.5m bid this afternoon for Crystal Palace's experienced striker - Glenn Murray. The 31 year-old has not found regular football at Selhurst Park with form of Dwight Gayle and Marouane Chamakh. A loan spell at Reading saw him bag eight goals from 18 games last season but Murray is best known for his heroics at Brighton where he netted 53 goals in 118 appearances.

It was the 2012-13 season when Murray is remembered not only for his 30 goals in the Championship but also for that semi-final when he suffered a horrendous knee injury playing for Palace against his former Brighton club that point him out of the game for nine months. Murray still managed to return to the game and score goals for Palace in the Premier League so it was a bit of a surprise when he was loaned out to Reading last January. AFCB were said to be interested in the striker then as well but moved for Kenwyne Jones instead in the end. 

Murray might not be the most dynamic of strikers in his movement, but he knows where the net is and he has scored at just about every level of the game that he has played at. Eddie Howe is certainly looking to bring in another front man and while the likes of Rickie Lambert, Dwight Gayle, Jordan Rhodes and even Dimitri Berbatov (I know complete rubbish) have been suggested targets there is plenty of weight to the belief that Murray would play a reasonable supporting role if the Cherries suffered early injuries in their Premier League campaign. Good in the air and in and around the box, if Murray could add 10 or more goals to the Cherries tally it might mean the difference between mid-table safety and battling it out to stay up.

Transfer talk is hotting up for the Cherries this week

The Cherries are never out of the gossip columns at the moment with the latest players being linked to the club including Dwight Gayle and Tom Huddlestone, while calls for Dimitri Berbatov have cooled off - although I never saw that as a real possibility. The player that is hitting the headlines up north though is that of AFCB centre back Steve Cook. The ever-present Cook is a prime target for newly installed Newcastle Utd boss Steve McClaren if we are to believe Tom Barclay of The Sun, as reported on the Vitals' site.

Does Steve want to remain a Cherry? He may have a choice to make next week.

Steve Cook has been a southerner though from what I can see apart from a short loan spell at Mansfield in 2010-11. A move away from the south coast to Newcastle would not fill many young centre backs with enthusiasm having just won promotion to the Premier League with an ambitious club. Newcastle could certainly probably double his wages though and while a price has not been suggested, Cook would probably be viewed as a cheap option for Newcastle if they really have some cash to spend this summer. With Mike Ashley there though, you never know what is really going on in his mind.

The Tom Huddlestone one is an interesting one as the local paper has categorically said that it is wide of the mark, which would imply it was really a complete non-starter. Yet, the links to the ex-tottenham man have not died down and with no central midfield additions to the Cherries squad yet there is clearly room for a top player to come in. Tom was perhaps one of the better players in a weak Hull City side and he has had periods of his career when he has been knocking on the door of an England call up once again and very nearly made it into Roy Hodgson's squad for the World Cup in 2014.

Meanwhile, it is wolves fans that seem devastated that Dwight Gayle is all lined up to join the Cherries, according to Football League World. The signing of Gayle would really underline Eddie Howe's desire to attack with great pace next season and competition for striker places would be fierce indeed. The problem for Wolves is that Everton and Leicester City seem more than a little keen on landing Bakaray Sako and it is unlikely that he will stay at Molineux with his contract running out.

So could it be one in and one out next week? Time will tell, but I expect Eddie Howe to fight tooth and nail to keep Steve Cook at the club as he is seen as part of the future. If Dwight Gayle really wants to make his name though, AFC Bournemouth could be an exciting new venture for him and I get the feeling that he'll come to Dean Court.

How do you improve a side that has just won the Championship?

Now that the joyous celebrations have started to give way to a realisation that AFCB must plan to tackle the Premier League teams that have pedigree and quality in abundance, it is time to find and select the players that will make this Cherries side a tougher proposition for teams to face next season. Improving on a team that scored 98 league goals in the Championship is perhaps not the worst base to start from and Eddie Howe has been very clear in that he wants to buy players that are British, that are keen to be coached and to learn and yet Howe also needs a balance and wants to be loyal to his core group of players.

AFCB have to find some way of getting even better.

The Premier League is a different league from the Championship with several tiers within its mould of 20 clubs. The experience that Burnley, QPR and Leicester have had this season has demonstrated that it is now very difficult for a newly promoted team to breeze in and establish itself among the mega rich teams in the Premier League. Plucking players from the Championship that have had strong seasons is the most likely route that I see AFCB taking to bolster their squad. Perhaps a big striker is something that the club still has room for and while foreign strikers have been already linked with the Cherries, Eddie Howe is most likely to go with a choice of player that has played in Britain already. His foreign shopping brought in Tokelo Rantie and Mohamed Coulibaly to the club some two years ago and while TK has not created the headlines hoped for for a club record signing, Coulibaly has been released.

Callum Wilson has delivered and has proved that there is talent in the lower leagues that can step up to at least the Championship level. Whether the Premier League can also be as fruitful for him we will soon find out. Big former Premier League strikers like Dimitri Berbatov and Kenwyne Jones come with big wages and while Eddie has added some older players to AFCB the profile of the squad has been a good mixture with youth not being overlooked in the case of Ryan Fraser and Baily Cargill.

While I am sure that more new wingers are at the top of the most wanted list - Eddie always likes a winger, it is the defence that probably is most in need of freshening up. You won't stay up if the team is conceding 60 plus goals in the Premier League and in the Championship AFCB let in 45 goals. Few fans get excited about signing centre backs or full backs but if the Cherries go up with a Championship defence and don't improve on it there will be no hiding place.

The Championship Run-In reports on Boro too strong for the Bees.

Transfer speculation goes barmy for Cherries

In the last few weeks you could already have built an entire new Cherries side from the linked players that are supposed to be on the club's radar for summer signings. How many of them are in Eddie Howe's sights is probably very few, but it is intriguing to see how agents feed stories to get their players to the front of the headlines to try and get them a lucrative move and who wouldn't like the challenge of joining Eddie Howe's squad in its first season in the Premier League?

The kind of players that have already been linked range from the young untried strikers to the elderly centre backs that have a Premier league sell-buy date hanging around their necks. So who do you want out of the list of rumours so far - Micah Richards, Obafemi Martins, Sylvian Distin, Kenwyne Jones, Jota, Demarai Gray, Charlie Mulgrew, Eder, Andre Gray, Charlie Austin, Dimitar Berbatov, Jermain Defoe and Artur Boruc - I have probably missed a few more but you get the feeling that just about anyone is being dangled in front of AFCB as they look at the windfall payment that the club now has in its pocket.  I have not been following every lead as more than half will just be pure speculation I am afraid.

If AFCB start spending in the region of £5m for
players in the Premier League they have to play more games
 than signings like TK.

Berbatov is now 34 and is likely to require a salary of £100,000 a week according to The Independent which does not fit the profile of the squad, so I would say such a move is somewhat wide of the mark. Berbatov is also not known for his high work rate and at Fulham he may have been a quality player, but he could not roll his sleeves up to save them from relegation. I am hoping that AFCB are much keener on young talent who want to prove themselves in the Premier League.

Promotion has also cost the club in more ways than you might imagine. Tokelo Rantie has just bagged Malmo FF £0.5m although how much of a help TK was in getting the Cherries up is perhaps more than a little questionable. Meanwhile, Stephane Zubar has cheekily seen a clause in his contract come into being with a year's extension because the club has reached the Premier League, so if you wondered why he was not among the seven released players you now know why.

The Football League Manager's Association is to honour Eddie Howe for the last week of the Championship season and the 3-0 win over Bolton Wanderers. This is the second time that Eddie has won the League Performance of the week award.