No one likes losing football games and even fewer of us don't mind losing heavily. Still AFCB is in a very strong league where teams will pick on your weaknesses and exploit every minor error to the maximum. The fact that this has happened in AFCB's first two away games might not have sent the alarm bells going if the big defeats had both been to teams that had either both come down from the Premiership or were both likely to win promotion this season. Huddersfield simply have not been put in that bracket by the pundits and yet they tore the Cherries apart at home in front of what was a fairly quiet home crowd.
So how much of the problems were to do with AFCB's own making? I am suggesting that quite a few of the errors were brought on by AFCB and the need for players to adapt to situations on the pitch and think for themselves, when danger is staring them in the face, is something that they will either react to or won't. I don't think things were quite right before the Huddersfield match with the players. A sudden change in personnel and perhaps a change of system to what had been worked on all week simply unsettled things. Excuses you may say, but match preparation is an art and if not all bases are covered we have seen that things can go badly wrong.
What I can't quite understand is why it should be all or nothing for AFCB at the moment? Grinding out a draw away from home is not a bad way to approach some games, but then perhaps Eddie Howe was trying to keep things tight and the players were unable to carry out his instructions. We know that it is great to be in this league after the barren seasons we have had in the lower leagues, but I can understand that fans do not want to see our club and players being battered every other week. There are problems for Eddie and Jason to sort out but if they can find the answers and be competitive in the Championship we will be even more proud of our club than we already are.
From what I have seen, none of the players or the management team want to let any one down. We have to keep working and look to improve. Everyone talks about consistency and at the moment AFCB is either Dr Jeckyll or Mr Hyde. If we can find some thing in between, AFCB supporters may be able to look at away fixtures without being quite so worried.
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