Missing Arter did not slow Cherries progress

One look at the team sheet last Saturday might have had a few fans fearing that AFCB were going to be stretched when the ever energetic Harry Arter was missing from the list. Still, there was no reason to get too stressed though as AFCB had an able and ready-made midfielder to do an excellent job and I'm among those who believe Dan Gosling should get more appearances than he does.

It's been good to Dan Gosling get some games. 

The job Gosling does often goes fairly unrecognised any yet he hardly ever disappoints. It was a compliment to how well he played that Arter was nit missed. Dan stuck his foot in to win challenges and was excellent in his passing. It showed a lot of what he was thinking as well when he saw a good shot from distance saved by Fabianski. He was gutted not to have scored and I tend to feel that he almost thinks he has to score to keep his place in the side.

While Edie Howe likes to play Surman and Arter when he can, there can't be much to choose between the three players. Eddie likes to play a system that sees Surman start moves off more often than not while Arter is the greyhound who chases down everything. But what we have with Gosling is an intelligent player that finds pockets of space and is usually available to take a pass. He reads the game very well and while he might not appear to dominate a game, he does influence the way others work around him and I thought some of the play with Adam Smith and Ryan Fraser was much more powerful when Dan also got involved.

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In many ways, AFCB are really lucky to have such a talent to draw upon. He could fit into many Premier League sides and when you look at his stats it comes as a bit of a surprise that he has played in 23 games this season, 12 of which have been sub appearances. Last season it was 34 appearances and only six as sub. So I guess I might be on the right lines that Gosling has been used more sparingly than he might have this season.

In other news, I was sad that Ryan Fraser had a knee injury and did not make his full international debut for Scotland yesterday, but he has plenty of time to make his mark.