‘I don’t know what I want to do next season’

Andoni Iraola is confident he has chosen the right time to leave Bournemouth and has admitted he did not want to disrupt the work he has done by staying for so long.

This week Iraola announced that his three years at the Vitality Stadium will come to an end this summer and he will be highly sought after by other clubs after building an exciting front-line team.

Bournemouth have been keen to keep the 43-year-old but Iraola feels now is the right time to seek a new challenge.

He said: “It was a decision that took me a long time, it was not a clear decision. I have been talking to the team about all the situations, they knew this could happen.

“There’s not always one big reason, I think the decision I made is because maybe I don’t want to risk the feeling I have now of satisfaction with these three seasons. You try to think about the fourth or fifth season and everything costs more.

“We, as people, get tired of looking at the same faces all the time and I think I decided that this was the right time to end this journey, which was very important to me.”

Bournemouth is in a beautiful place – Iraola

Iraola has been linked with Newcastle, who will face Bournemouth tomorrow, with the likes of Manchester United and Real Madrid.

Wherever he ends up, he knows he will lose what he currently has on the South Coast.

“I think the club is in a good place,” he added. “In this club I have things that I can’t find anywhere else, I come every day to work here with a smile and this is very important to me.

“It’s not a clear decision. I can’t confirm it because it took me this season. Sometimes I thought ‘oh I’m definitely going to stay here’. Sometimes I thought ‘I won’t continue here’.

“It’s a matter of emotions and there is a moment where you have to make a decision and this is the decision I made, I’d rather make the mistake of thinking that maybe I could have stayed for one year rather than thinking that I could have stayed a year longer.

“There’s a small amount of money you’re playing with and that’s how it is.”

What is Andoni Iraola’s Premier League record at Bournemouth?

Statistics provided by Opta

I don’t mean anything, insisted Iraola

The former Rayo Vallecano manager is now in a strong position as he heads into the summer but insists he does not yet know where he will end up. He is also determined to end the season strongly with Bournemouth, who are still looking to enter Europe following the victory over Arsenal last weekend.

He said: “The decision was not about another club, no other party was involved – it was about continuing here or not continuing here.

“I don’t know what I want to do next season, I don’t know if I will coach the team, the club, I don’t know if I will coach the international team, I don’t know if I will coach in this continent, I don’t know what will happen.

“I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but it’s true. And I’m not in a hurry to find out. I’ve made a big decision for myself, now I want to focus on what we have at this moment. The next six games are big for us.

“There will be time to think [later] if we have to think about something else.”