Having proclaimed that the Cherries would become a debt free club during October, the Cherries Chairman has gone back on the statement he made back in July.
Speaking in the Bournemouth Evening Echo, Mitchell is quoted as saying: "We’ve still got a week to go but the odds are that we won’t be debt-free by the end of October. It’s going to be hard work but we didn’t expect anything else. The downturn in the market place hasn’t helped but has been counter-acted by the good fortune of the team on the pitch. There is always a time in the season when it’s difficult and, between now and Christmas, are probably going to be the most difficult months for the club. I don’t think anybody needs to look much farther than our own finances to see that things aren’t fine. The whole country has to re-correct itself and everybody is in the same boat. The team has made our job very easy with regard to selling to the crowd and building crowd numbers because of the way they are playing and that side of it is going very well. There is a fine balance between what we spend to promote the stadium and what we put aside to pay debts and one has got to work with the other. It’s no good standing still and not trying to turn around the business and using every penny to pay debts. We don’t want to go back to having a once-a-fortnight, Saturday afternoon stadium. We’ve got to carry on down the road we have chosen and that is to promote it as a business. We’re probably one of the few clubs in this league that is trying to do that".