Vocal home crowds are crucial to AFCB

There were signs last weekend that the home crowd were very dismayed and disillusioned about the way the team gave away possession and did not compete strongly enough against a very determined and skillful Blackburn Rovers team that made life very difficult for the Cherries, pressing them high up the pitch. The North stand really tried to pick everyones' spirits up in the second half, but sitting in the Family stand, I could not hear much support getting behind the lads when they were three nil down. It was as if the wind had been sucked out of us and certainly there was an inevitability about the result.

While the team will have games at home when it is up against it the crowd really do have to make up the 12th man. When Dean Court is in full voice it is a passionate place to be. I felt that within 10 minutes of the game starting Blackburn Rovers supporters were giving as good as they got and before long they were giving their team an extra lift. I am hoping that today the fans really can get behind the team from the start. We have to have that passion and enthusiasm in this league. If we go quiet it will play into the hands of the opposition.

In some ways it shows you that we are not used to seeing a team come to our ground and play us off the park. We expect the Cherries to win our home games and the disappointment when they don't is really heart felt, but as fans we have to give that bit more. This is a much harder league than League One and the teams AFCB are up against will come to quieten the crowd and keep the ball. We have to be noisy and stop their fans having an impact on the game. We are in this as much as the players and the staff. If we do our part the players will feel it easier to put in a positive performance. Let's make the Goldsands stadium a difficult place for any team to come to.

Eddie Howe spoke about the during the week . We need to stay with the team, sing for 90 minutes and help them to a vital win. If you are going today sing up. Give the team your full support. We have a couple of players that are new and on loan so they need to settle quickly. If we can remind Millwall of their last away game they could buckle, so let's put them under pressure.

AFCB home form:
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Millwall Away form:
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You can now read up on Millwall FC, the next visitors to Dean Court. Our Rival Lines feature offers a chat with Merv Payne who is a regular writer for Sabotage Times. He discusses Millwall's sudden improvement under Steve Lomas.

Send in your match predictions before 9am and I'll post as many as I can. We actually had two Leeds fans get the result right in the week so let's see if we can get a Cherries win and some correct scores today.