Friday 3 October 2014

AFCB's wing men need to get among the goals

I expect many of you have noticed that the Cherries wingers have not yet weighed in with a bucket load of goals. While Marc Pugh got off to a great start and Junior Stanislas netted the winner against Brentford, goals have been hard to come by for AFCB's wide men. I am trying to figure out why that may be? Some may say that the constant changing of personnel on the wings has not enabled them to hit their top game yet, others have said they would like to see right footed players on the right and left-footed players on the left rather than all the cutting infield, while it could just be a lack of goals because most of the chances are simply falling more to the strikers.
We look forward to seeing Matt Ritchie's first goal of the season. 
Matt Ritchie is a player though who we might have expected to have scored a few goals by now. He certainly has been shooting regularly and has come close on a number of occasions. Against Wigan Matt managed to get a full 90 minutes in and has appeared in 11 matches so far. The  change for him this season is that he is being subbed a little more often. Whether this is helping him to perform better in bursts, rather than getting full matches must have been assessed. Fraser, Pugh and Stanislas have certainly been the most busy players along with Ritchie in getting 40 or 60 minutes in matches. Ryan Fraser is one player that we might see a bit more of now that he is back in training and he could be used against Bolton, and while we are  just about to enter another international break I can't see any freindly fixtures yet named for Scotland U21 squad.
Pugh is looking like scoring but has not played a great deal this season.
The wingers are certainly essential elements of how Eddie Howe wants the team to play and there is less likelihood of burnout or injuries if the players in these positions can spread the workload. What I wonder though is why there have not been many goals coming from them yet if they are not having to play for so many minutes every game? If the wing men can contribute more fire power it is likely to bring AFCB's goal average up towards 1.75 goals a game, which the best teams in the division are already achieving (AFCB were averaging about 1.56 pre-Derby Co game). Meanwhile, Bolton - tomorrow's opponents are back on 0.7 goals a game! 

Breaking News: Dougie Freedman leaves Bolton Wanderers. Dougie Freedman's departure may give some relief to Bolton's players, but AFCB must look to capitalise on his departure with a good performance.

1 comment:

  1. That sacking was very bad timing, Eddie will have prepared the team for Doug Freedman's Bolton and now no-one knows how they are going to play. Still, it worked at Cardiff.
    A couple of games and we'll see if it was Dougie Freedman's tactics or that insignificant £163.8m debt they are carrying which means they can't fork out for players.

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