150 Premier League appearance up for Steve Cook

Captain Cook has done a great job in his last couple of games. Steve racked up his 150th appearance in the Premier League last Saturday and was making all the clearances and challenges to ensure Ramsdale wasn't give too much of a hard work out.

The calls for Steve Cook to get an England call up keep growing.

The captaincy surely does a lot for Cook's game. He really wears his armband with price and doesn't want the team to put in a poor performance. That means starting with his own game and while he has been back and fully fit, it is hard to see how Chris Mepham or Simon Francis will get near to the starting 11.

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The partnership with Nathan Aké is fully developed now. There is a real understanding between them and they seem much more focused on getting clean sheets. It is the small details that count and that make the difference and the communication from Cook is what I like to see. He was checking with Aaron Ramsdale and Nathan Aké regularly about what he wanted and the organisation of setting the offside line was good all game with Cook in control of it.

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The defensive side of Bournemouth's game has probably never been stronger. Three clean sheets in a row might well be a record for the club in the Premier League. Certainly, the back four look solid and it is not often we have been able to say that.

Players like Steve Cook are now gaining an enormous amount of experience with the time they have under their belt in the Premier League. But it's the players like Jack Simpson and Chris Mepham that need to be talking and learning from the experiences Cook has so that when they get to come into the team they are a bit more knowledgeable of things to watch out for.

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