Josh McQuiod has had a difficult time since coming back to AFCB. He is another player who would have been keen to have played in our final game of the season as an ex-Millwall player but has been out on loan at Peterborough since January. He has been lucky enough to play in the FA Trophy final at Wembley and even scored the first goal on Peterborough's way to a 3-1 victory against Chesterfield. Having helped Posh into the play-off places he could not get them to the League One play-off final. Now his loan period will be up and he'll return to the Cherries.
Josh still has a year to go on his Bournemouth contract and while he might find that the Posh are interested in him of they get promoted through the play-offs, I believe he still has a shot of playing a part in the Cherries forthcoming season. He was injured for the first part of the 2013/14 season and Eddie Howe has only used him sparingly since Eddie Howe came back to the club, but with Andrew Surman looking like returning to Norwich permanently, Josh may well be given an opportunity to add some of the goals that are needed from that area of the pitch.
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Josh will need a good pre-season to push
for a place in the Cherries first team. |
It is wise to remember that AFCB do want to try and reduce some of their debts and constantly buying new players while also paying others not playing on their books is a good way of increasing debts. I would hope that Josh would want to prove himself at AFCB and the fans should be generous to give him all the support they can if he lines up again for the Cherries. Josh will only be 25 in December and sometimes we forget how young he is as a player having left and returned to the club. He knows the club inside out and will have been taught be Joe Roach as well as Jason Tindall and Eddie Howe and knowing the club's style of play so well should give him more ammunition than most to be able to get into the side. I don't think that Eddie Howe has felt that Josh has been fully fit for much of the last few months but having got some games in at Peterborough and hopefully got a taste for contributing again I would like to see Josh prove a few people wrong having had a good pre-season.
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| Can Josh step up his performances? |
Finally, the news today is that Stephen Purches is to hang up his boots which is sad to hear but perhaps not that unexpected. We wish him well with everything he does in his coaching capacity with the Development squad and perhaps he can inspire more AFCB players to do as well as he did for the club.
I thought Josh McQ did a better job as our main forward than Danny Ings did, although pretty much all of his goals came against sides in the bottom half of that division. Brett Pitman was better than either of them, but with a different style.
ReplyDeleteI had written Stephen Purches off as a player long ago. He did better than expected after he came back from E London but when it became clear how bad his Rochdale injury was, time to move on.
I look up Garreth O'Connor occasionally, the only one of our Cardiff Playoff goalscorers to have nothing to do with the club. I hope he is doing well but fear he is not, he is being passed around the Irish leagues nowadays. That Burnley move destroyed his career.