Tuesday 1 May 2018

AFCB's passing - going nowhere

The game against Southampton really highlighted a few poor aspects of Bournemouth's passing game. Not only did the team find it hard to retain possession in the last third when trying to build up a bit of pressure on the Southampton goal, but the Cherries gave the ball away in midfield and even found trouble when passing back to Asmir Begovic.
So many passes are going astray.
To some extent, I have to give credit for the pressing that Southampton did to put Bournemouth in uncomfortable positions from where they had to play out. But AFCB's players did not find ways to get their game going well enough and when they got up field there was not enough pace to attacks to stretch Southampton.

Eddie did try and shake things up by bringing on Jordan Ibe and Jermain Defoe, but the attacks didn't materialise in a consistent way until the last 10 minutes. Ibe couldn't find one of his own team-mates when they were standing next to him. The only way Bournemouth were able to get some balls into the box were with Simon Francis putting in some long ball crosses from distance.

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Eddie Howe wanted to get more structure to the Cherries' play as it had been lacking all afternoon. If AFCB don't get their fluid passing in sync there tends to be a disconnect in the team going forwards and Wilson might as well have been playing on a separate pitch at times. The Cherries seem to have to find a rhythm and a tempo to their game to work optimally and once that gets disrupted they find it hard to pass with the same accuracy.

We know that AFCB can cut teams open, like they did when paying Chelsea away, but Eddie Howe still hasn't found that kind of consistency with this team and he must be himself rather bemused how his team can hit such heights one day, and be so far off the pace as they were against Southampton. 

AskFans' Report - Southampton 2 v 1 AFCB

Cherry Chimes' Newsletter - out today!
Cherry Chimes' May Newsletter brings you the best stories on the blog and the thoughts behind them from last month. It's out today with special story - Only points against the top six have kept AFCB away from WBA and Stoke City.

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