"Straight away I thought - what a lovely bloke. He knew everything about the club. All the history."
Marco Rose has wasted no time making himself at home at Bournemouth. That should come as no surprise given the club's reputation for smooth managerial transitions - among the smoothest in the Premier League - after a campaign in which the Cherries lost more than £250m worth of playing talent yet still produced the most successful season in their 123-year history.
Rose is not being asked to be a carbon copy of Andoni Iraola, but the hope inside the Vitality Stadium is that he won't be far off either. He has certainly made an early effort to understand the club from top to bottom, much as his predecessor did before him.
"Right from the start, not just him but his staff went round every department, gave them a time of day," club legend and ambassador Steve Fletcher tells Sky Sports. "It didn't matter if you were a groundsman or in the accounts or media or marketing or you're a chef."
"He went up and he chatted to them all. And it's not just lip service, I can see he has a real interest in everybody."
Bournemouth confirmed Rose's appointment back in April 2026, handing the German a three-year contract to succeed Iraola once the 2025-26 season had finished, as previously reported.
On the pitch, if the aim is to keep the intense pressing style Iraola built, then a coach schooled under Jurgen Klopp is a sensible pick. The two managers clearly rate one another's work - Iraola himself said back in 2023 that "Marco Rose's Gladbach was one of my favourite teams."
Iraola's Cherries were no slouches for output either. They produced the third-most direct attacks in the Premier League last season and ended with the fourth-most shots generated from high turnovers. More tellingly, they scored the fifth-most goals in the entire division - just 13 fewer than champions Arsenal.
"Andoni didn't leave a lot of space to improve," Rose admitted in pre-season. "The pressure is on."
He has clearly taken that challenge on board. Bournemouth have scored 21 goals across five pre-season friendlies, with even new centre-back Antonio Silva earning praise for his attacking contribution going forward. Silva arrived from Benfica after making 181 appearances for the Portuguese giants, and Bournemouth's own coaching staff have already backed him to flourish in the Premier League following a career that included an early rise and a subsequent stalled spell, as covered in our earlier report on Silva's move.
Evanilson appears to have shifted from a spearhead role into more of a False 9, freeing up the wide men - most likely Rayan and either Ben Gannon-Doak or Justin Kluivert - to attack the space behind him to good effect in the games so far. It's not hard to see the echoes of Klopp's Liverpool in that setup.
How much stock to put in any pre-season friendly, let alone a 10-1 win over Genoa - a side who actually conceded fewer league goals than Bournemouth in Serie A last season - is always debatable. According to the club's own confirmation of the fixture list, that Genoa match was played behind closed doors at the Performance Centre, while Bournemouth also faced St Pauli, Augsburg and Real Betis in the buildup, with the Betis game staged at the Estadio de la Cartuja in Seville on 8 August. Still, these games offer a sense of direction, and if there is one clear priority for Rose this summer, it looks to be sharpening the attack.
That shouldn't come as a shock. In Rose's only season in charge of Borussia Dortmund five years ago, his side smashed the club's league scoring record with 85 goals - more than any campaign even under his mentor Klopp. It was porous defending, particularly in Europe, that ultimately cost him that job, and finding the right balance between attacking football and defensive solidity across multiple competitions is likely to be Rose's toughest test this season.
Fletcher, Bournemouth's third-highest all-time goalscorer, sees it the same way.
"We've got to acclimatise to playing Thursday and Sunday. Your fixtures could get changed rapidly and we've got to be very adaptable and that's going to be new for this football club," he said, speaking as MrQ celebrated becoming AFC Bournemouth's new official sleeve partner.
"Fortunately the manager is very experienced but for a lot of the players who are not experienced to playing in Europe it's going to be a big adjustment. It's going to be one hell of an occasion. I'm sure there'll be a few tears shed by everybody."
Europa League test and squad stability
Bournemouth's continental adventure means Rose must manage a squad balancing Premier League demands with European football, something the club has never really had to contend with at this level before. The Europa League league-phase draw is scheduled for 28 August 2026, according to Sky Sports, which will shape exactly how gruelling that Thursday-Sunday rhythm Fletcher describes turns out to be.
A settled summer has given Rose the chance to embed his ideas early, with two of his three permanent signings arriving at least three weeks before the Premier League season got under way. But arguably the shrewdest work of the window has been who Bournemouth have kept rather than who they've brought in. Alex Scott has spent much of the transfer window fielding interest from a big-six club, yet Bournemouth have made it abundantly clear they intend to keep him at the Vitality Stadium.
Eli Kroupi Junior, meanwhile, looks destined for the very top before long, though he isn't going anywhere in the short term after picking up a foot injury on a training camp in Austria last month.
If Iraola could deliver what he did after losing his best players in one summer, it's tantalising to wonder what Rose might achieve now that Bournemouth have managed to hold onto theirs. One thing seems certain - it's unlikely to be a quiet season at the Vitality.
What happens next
Bournemouth's Premier League campaign begins away at Manchester City on Sunday 23 August 2026, live on Sky Sports, according to Sky Sports' fixture schedule. Their first home league game follows on 29 August against Everton, as also confirmed by the BBC.
After that, Rose's side travel to Newcastle on 5 September before returning home to face Brentford on 12 September and then hosting Liverpool - now managed by former Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola - on 20 September, according to fixture details published by Odds Calendar.
Interestingly, reports suggest Iraola's methods at Liverpool have already left a mark, with his gruelling pre-season regime reportedly leaving Liverpool players lying on the floor, according to defender Milos Kerkez - a sign that whatever changes Rose brings at Bournemouth, his predecessor's demanding standards are already being felt elsewhere.
