Bill Foley’s grand plan for Bournemouth should be no surprise

Gary O’Neil sat at home on Sunday musing on Bournemouth’s pre-season plans. Monday morning he was fired by phone and his successor, Andoni Iraola, was appointed within two hours.

The move came as a major shock and was largely condemned after O’Neil kept Bournemouth in the Premier League against all odds given the Cherries’ more modest budget.

But honestly, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, not with new owner Bill Foley pulling the strings.

You see, Foley absolutely hates mediocrity. Hate it. Staying, what many consider a success for Bournemouth year after year, won’t make it for the Austin-born billionaire.

“I believe that if you tolerate mediocrity, your business will be mediocre,” Foley once told the Las Vegas Review Journal. “I won’t tolerate it.”

And with that, O’Neil was gone and Iraola was in.

Foley, who had four children with his wife Carol, is a curious character, he was once described as a “frank man with an almost goofy charm”.

He has likened himself to a ‘dictator’ who should be ‘captain of the ship’. In 1996, he described himself as his own “worst enemy.”

Born in 1944 in Texas the only child of a father in the United States Air Force, Foley quickly learned not to get too attached – to things or places.

He bounced around houses, spent time in Canada when his father was stationed there, and routinely found himself in Texas during the summers on a ranch owned by his mother’s family.

Foley’s dream was to become a fighter pilot, but his deteriorating eyesight put an end to that and he was assigned a desk role after graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1967.

While a cadet, he showed his business acumen by earning $40,000 in profits trading stocks. It would be the beginning of a fascination with acquisition and profit.

And an analysis by Foley – who later earned degrees from Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law – shows an almost military efficiency when it comes to business. High standards, acquiring lots of assets and cutting losses without much sentiment if it doesn’t work out.

“I always want things to be better than they were. I can be a little anal about it,” he said Forbes in 2017.

“If I’m in a conference room and the chairs aren’t all right behind the table, I rearrange them.”

Foley’s business empire, which has his estimated net worth at $1.6 billion according to Forbes, appears to have him invested in wineries, golf courses, hotels, ski resorts and restaurants. It has been in the last decade that, even at a later age, his ambition in the sport is red-hot.

In 2016, Foley paid $500 million to buy the Vegas Golden Knights hockey team, the first NHL expansion team since 2000.

The immediate message was clear: we are going to spend and we are going to win.

“I know I can create a winning culture,” he said Worth in 2016. “I believe hockey will be easier than some of my businesses.”

That’s exactly what he accomplished, with the Knights winning their first-ever Stanley Cup this year by beating Florida.

But in typical Foley fashion, winning a win wouldn’t quench the thirst for success.

“We’re not done yet,” Foley said. “I told William Karlsson (star player) when he signed an eight-year contract [in 2019] that I expect three Stanley Cups during the term of his contract.

“When we were on the ice and our [championship] picture, I looked at him and said to him, “OK, you have one.”‘

There’s something Foley said in 2002 that resonates to this day – and it’s a nod to why Bournemouth turned things upside down when staying on patrol seemed like the safest option.

“We’re always looking over our shoulder,” Foley said in the Santa Barbara News-Press in August 2002. “So if things are going well, it’s time to prepare.”

And so to Bournemouth, a club he refuses to wallow in his image of being the smallest fish in English football’s largest pond.

“Gary will have a long career as a head coach or manager, but we believe there is a change in the interests of this football club at the moment. I would like to thank Gary and wish him all the best for the future,” Foley said, finishing Monday’s statement.

You are good, but not really good enough.

Michael B. Jordan is on board as a minority owner, Foley is willing to spend money and he looks at Aston Villa and Brighton and those who are pressuring the English football elite and wonders why not us?

“We’re not afraid of change,” Foley said the athletics. “We want to make things better. I want this team to play in Europe.

“Our ultimate goal is not to worry about avoiding relegation, but to move up the rankings.”

Foley didn’t waste much time deciding that O’Neil wouldn’t take them there.

Working with Foley isn’t easy. He makes the decisions and takes the blame, that’s how it goes.

“I’ve looked at several teams over the past two or three years and they’ve all been involved in minority investments and someone else is already in charge. I do not like that. I am a dictator,” he said BBC Radio Solent when buying the team.

“If I’m involved, I have to be the captain of the ship. I had to wait for a situation where I could buy the team myself, with my partners of course, and decide the fate of the team.’

But Jordan can offer something Foley, for all his billions, can’t: A-List appeal.

“He’s going to help with international marketing,” Foley said of Jordan’s undefined role.

“He’s going to help with our brand marketing. In five years this will be a different club.’

What happens next, given his minority stake in FC Lorient, in France’s top division, is one to watch. Multi-club models have found great success elsewhere in Europe and Foley is ambitious enough to create a web of talent all traced back to the south coast.

But if there’s one message to send to the new boss Iraola: shoot the ground. Foley is also not a man to sell mediocrity.