The Cherries home record has suddenly been pulverised. With no wins in their last five, the fear of playing at Dean Court has disappeared for visiting teams and with just Tottenham to play at home it will be down to the away form for AFCB to challenge their best points total of 46 points.
The faltering performance against Fulham kind of summed up the questioning manner of the players to what was going on. They could not sort it out on the pitch during the 90 minutes and sometimes teams need intelligent players to say hold on this is not working, what are we dong wrong? How can we turn it around? There is still a lack of leadership for AFCB and the missing presence of Simon Francis and players like Harry Arter is perhaps more of an issue than fans might like to imagine.
The club is moving on but it needs strong characters. It is becoming a team of lightweight personalities when games are testing. While some of the players have not had to grind out difficult games in the lower leagues, they have been relying on their quality to get them through games against the best in the Premier League. When that quality isn't there, the heart of players from the lower leagues simply isn't there and AFCB have little to fall back on. AFCB is changing, but perhaps not always for the better.
The home form has now also become a problem. Going into next season, Howe has to find some better results in pre-season if he can't do it by the end of this season, because the atmosphere is not going to be great at Dean Court, if they continue to put in poor performances.
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| Home points have really dropped off. |
While we can't write off the Tottenham game before it has even started, the signs are that Bournemouth need to be in far better shape to get something from a game with a top six team and to be fair Bournemouth have only managed that one all season.
The faltering performance against Fulham kind of summed up the questioning manner of the players to what was going on. They could not sort it out on the pitch during the 90 minutes and sometimes teams need intelligent players to say hold on this is not working, what are we dong wrong? How can we turn it around? There is still a lack of leadership for AFCB and the missing presence of Simon Francis and players like Harry Arter is perhaps more of an issue than fans might like to imagine.
The club is moving on but it needs strong characters. It is becoming a team of lightweight personalities when games are testing. While some of the players have not had to grind out difficult games in the lower leagues, they have been relying on their quality to get them through games against the best in the Premier League. When that quality isn't there, the heart of players from the lower leagues simply isn't there and AFCB have little to fall back on. AFCB is changing, but perhaps not always for the better.
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The home form has now also become a problem. Going into next season, Howe has to find some better results in pre-season if he can't do it by the end of this season, because the atmosphere is not going to be great at Dean Court, if they continue to put in poor performances.
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