Josh King was open in his criticism of the team to not hold on to their goal lead at Everton. A lack of discipline and focus cost the team the victory in his opinion. While Everton had to take their chances to win there is little that Eddie Howe can take from the way that Bournemouth defended their goal in the last 20 minutes.
Good defending is an art and it seems to have fallen out of the mentality of players in the Premier League. We glory a the goals but don't recognise defending as being equal and perhaps it is time that Bournemouth looked more closely at this part of the game. Holding on to leads is something that AFCB have suffered from in past seasons and it is rearing its head again. Being stubborn and focussed on opposition movement when your team is not in position is key at this level and even though players tire during a game they need to try and keep the same focus for 90 minutes.
At Everton the players looked a bit swamped when Everton started to turn it on and it was a complete turnaround in what we had seen for the first 70 minutes. At least the players have a week to recover and to go into the next game with hopefully more strength to try and see the game out against Leicester.
ASK Fans Match Report - Everton 2 v 1 AFCB
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| Josh King is happy to score but he wants the goals to lead to wins. |
AFCB are conceding goals at a rapid rate. If it continues like this they will break the 70 goals a season against level which is far more than they let in in their first two seasons in the Premier League. With the summer acquisition of Nathan Aké and Asmir Begovic it was thought that the goals against would tighten up, but it hasn't been the case. While it has not been individual mistakes this season there has been a tend for the whole team not defending well enough at times and it's really costing AFCB now.
Good defending is an art and it seems to have fallen out of the mentality of players in the Premier League. We glory a the goals but don't recognise defending as being equal and perhaps it is time that Bournemouth looked more closely at this part of the game. Holding on to leads is something that AFCB have suffered from in past seasons and it is rearing its head again. Being stubborn and focussed on opposition movement when your team is not in position is key at this level and even though players tire during a game they need to try and keep the same focus for 90 minutes.
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The Everton goals were great from their point of view and the crowd certainly gave momentum to the Everton comeback, but I'm not sure where the leaders were in the Bournemouth team to stand up to it when Everton had equalised. Sometimes AFCB just need that person to get the players fired back up and concentrating on their game rather than dwelling on the disappointment of a goal going in. King is right in that we have many good goalscorers at the club and we have to believe that we can get back in games when they start going against us.
At Everton the players looked a bit swamped when Everton started to turn it on and it was a complete turnaround in what we had seen for the first 70 minutes. At least the players have a week to recover and to go into the next game with hopefully more strength to try and see the game out against Leicester.
ASK Fans Match Report - Everton 2 v 1 AFCB
Pushing Ake into midfield was a serious piece of poor game management, it unsettled the defence, who up to then had been superb, just at a time when Everton were pushing up to try and recover their losing position and Steve Cook has been well off form anyway! Eddie Howe has talked about the players game management, he needs to look at his own game management, it's not the first time he has lost us points from a wining position by making the wrong substitution calls. Lewis Cook should have replaced Defoe (not Afobe) the midfield area should have been strengthend and stiffened to help protect the defence... it would have left just King up front which was all that was required to see the game out. Stanislas was looking leggy and should have been replaced by Pugh as a fresh pair of legs to help stop Everton building attacks from the back. All this should have been done as soon as we went ahead in order counteract the fresh Everton impetus that was obviously going to happen. Eddie needs to take a fresh look at himself.
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