Rollercoaster

Friday 1^st February 2013

You join us just over half way through the 2012-13 season. As usual we have had a rollercoaster of a journey that has seen the Cherries just come off of a record run of 17 games unbeatean that was first dented by Wigan in the FA Cup and then shattered by Walsall in a surprisingly lackluster performance in the Black Country. Since then we have returned to winning ways with victory over Hartlepool and Crewe Alexander and excitement has been raised by the arrival of Matt Ritchie from Swindon only two days ago as the winter transfer window underlined AFCB’s ambition and spending power once again to build a team that can perhaps see us into the Championship.

It was a strange transfer window as we usually fear losing our best players, having been a feeder club for many years. Things are different now. The club held onto the players it wanted to keep and has allowed its experiment in Dutch signings to leave with best wishes. The Paul Groves era was perhaps not the club’s finest with many signings that did not seem to gel. Frank Demogue and Lorenzo Davids did not get much of a run out in English football and were perhaps not right for the club, although Eddie Mitchell has spoken out this week in the press that Frank Demogue was not a dud! A player that has won the hearts of the fans is Stephan Zubar and while he has started a new on loan spell at Bury we wonder why he has not had more of an opportunity to be in the side. But in Eddie we trust. Our manager has made a team of players that came with high credentials but no team spirit into a football machine that is storming its way through the division. Eddie Howe and Jason have galvanized the team. The out of sorts Wes Thomas has also left the club on loan to Birmingham after successful loan spells at Portsmouth and Blackpool in the Championship. Shame he hadn’t scored for the Cherries since last March. We now have new talent in the form of Ryan Fraser, the new winger sensation from Aberdeen and Ryan Allsopp who is a top young keeper from Orient.

The big signing though was Matt Ritchie. Ritchie scored 23 goals in 91 appearances for Town. He was apparently allowed to join us after Swindon Town FC needed the new owners to save their club from entering administration with the sale. So we got Ritchie on the cheap it seems at  500,000 if you read the news reports. I got a retweet saying that it was not the two million Di Canio had said he was worth last year, but I miss-spelt the Italian maestro’s name, oops. I guess it does not matter so much with social media as long as the sentiment is there. Another tweet said that Ritchie must be the price Swindon had had to pay up following the breakage they caused to the away team dugout at the Goldsands Stadium a few weeks ago, lol.

Our next game is against MK Dons. It won’t be an easy one at their place but the new signings will hopefully give us the momentum we need to go and get a result. I expect the travelling fans to be one of our biggest crowds of the season as the Dons are also riding high in the league and we need to take points off of them. The recent draws at Brentford and against Swindon Town were disappointing, that is how far we have come. AFCB wants to win games and I hope we can keep the run going now until the end of the season. Doncaster and Tranmere have set a good pace at the top of the league and we need to keep them in sight if we are to snatch an automatic promotion place off of them.

Tonight, Sheffield united take on Coventry in a top seven game. It would be helpful if it were a draw of if the blades slip up, but we will see.

I was given a tweet reply from Marc Pugh tonight who wished me well for the weekend. I told him all games are big now until the end of the season. He is amazing Marc, always has time for the fans and a family man.