CHERRIES chairman Peter Phillips says he will "move heaven and earth" in a bid to avoid selling players to help ease the club's crippling debts.

Phillips is adamant the club's acute financial crisis can be resolved without further weakening Sean O'Driscoll's already wafer-thin squad.

And he is hopeful the newly-launched Cherryshare II scheme will come to the club's rescue before the need arises to sell another player.

Cherries are currently around £6m in the red and Phillips believes the club needs to raise at least £300,000 to keep trading through to the end of the season.

Phillips told the Daily Echo: "There are a number of other ways of sorting out the finances of the club before we need to consider selling a player but I can't rule it out.

"A random example would be that if James Hayter keeps scoring goals at the rate he is now, you could imagine the situation where somebody would come in for him and it would be irresponsible for us not to consider that.

"But that would have nothing to do with our current financial circumstances because a big enough bid would get any of our players at any time. It's unfortunate, but that's the real world we live in at the moment.

"We are working very hard to find a solution to our financial problems which doesn't involve us damaging our team and we certainly won't be actively touting our players around other clubs.

"In the current circumstances, it would be more difficult than ever to turn down a sizeable bid but we're not going to let our players go on the cheap.

"One of the main reasons I am so determined that we don't fall into administration is that an administrator would immediately look to try to offload players at knockdown fees just to get rid of wages.

"I think that would be an absolute disaster for the club because as so much progress has been made on the football side, it's vital we don't forget, even in our current financial circumstances, what we are here for."

Cash-strapped Cherries were forced to offload prize asset Carl Fletcher to West Ham last month to help clear some outstanding bills but Phillips says there has been no interest in any other players.

He added: "We haven't received any enquires for any other players. There isn't an awful lot of money around so it isn't surprising in those circumstances that we haven't had any interest.

"The window for Premiership clubs has closed so any money that might have been coming into league clubs from the Premiership has stopped. West Ham were only able to make a bid for Carl because they got money in for Michael Carrick."

Cherries press officer Karenza Morton is leaving the club to take up a post with the Southern Daily Echo at the start of next month.