Tuesday 13 January 2015

Not a lot wrong with the Cherries

In the last few games AFCB had been able to keep the opposition well away from the Cherries goal and had not seen a shot on target against Artur Boruc. While Norwich did not manage much better, they scored two and had three shots on target during the match.
AFCB players are still keeping chances against them down to a minimum.
Even when Norwich did score, the first goal they had was hotly disputed and on another day the match officials might have seen the arm to the ball and have ruled the goal out. Apart from that chance though it was not often that Norwich got into Bournemouth's box and troubled Artur Boruc or made him make a save. The chance created by Cameron Jerome in the first half, when he tricked his way into the box and shot at the near post, and Boruc pulled off a low save with his legs, was perhaps the one moment when I thought we've been undone here at the back.

The second goal that Norwich scored was right out of the blue. AFCB have had a few wonder strikes themselves this season, but Jerome's strike was just an instance of magic for the Canaries. Having seen the ball fall down from Cook's attempted intervention, that touched his arm, I half wonder if that gave Jerome the time to get his shot away as the players almost expected a free kick could be given. In the event, the advantage was all with Norwich and AFCB paid for not doing enough when they had the game in the balance at 1-1 and a real chance against 10-men.

That AFCB did not find the pass to unlock the 10-men of Norwich in the last half hour is the problem that Eddie Howe may look at in training. Usually the team is good at making the ball work hard when the opposition is down in  number, but it just didn't happen for the Cherries in this match. If AFCB can keep opposition teams to long range shots though and keep the shots on target against down, they will surely win more of these kind of encounters than they lose going forward.

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