Tuesday 21 April 2020

Who has the toughest run in among bottom six?

Everyone admits there are no easy gams in the Premier League, but many are harder than others. For example AFCB have never managed to get a point off of Man City and it is one of their remaining games, so perhaps that cuts the Cherries down to eight games to count. But other teams also have tricky games with Liverpool among Aston Villa's remaining matches, Chelsea will line up against Watford and West Ham will take on Man United and Tottenham in some of their remaining fixtures. It's going to be tough and yet the fixture that jumps out in a lot of the remaining games is the name of Burnley, who may well have a deciding factor on who goes down.
AFCB have it all to do if the season resumes.
Luckily or not AFCB have already played Burnley twice and suffered the consequences. But Brighton, Watford and Norwich all have to go away to Sean Dyche's side and West Ham have to play them at the London Stadium. Of the teams that have to play the top six the most we can look least favourably on Brighton & Hove Albion, who have to face five of the big guns in their remaining fixtures. Bournemouth have four such fixtures as do Aston Villa, but Watford have only three as do West Ham, while Norwich have two such fixtures left. So getting results against top teams is going to be most important for Brighton and Bournemouth.
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There are several six pointer games as we like to call them as well. Bournemouth are not in those having played all their games against the bottom six. Southampton are the lowest team that Bournemouth will have to pay in the run-in. But AFCB fans will be watching carefully on games like Norwich v Brighton, Norwich v West Ham, West Ham v Watford, Watford v Norwich, West Ham v Aston Villa. Norwich are involved in three of these games as are West Ham indicating that their fates well may rest on these bottom six fixtures.

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However, you call it we can expect it to be a tight race with a few more twists and turns yet. The odds probably favour Watford, West Ham and Brighton to stay up, but four wins from Bournemouth would very likely be enough to keep them. However, adding the points from these games last season to AFCB's potential total, from their remaining fixtures this season, is not good news. This time around we could expect something like eight points from these games. which may not be enough to beat the drop.
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For me the best fixture list in the run-in is probably Norwich's run of games, but they are playing catch up and may well have to much to do now. After that'I'd probably go for West Ham and Watford's fixtures, leaving Brighton, Bournemouth and Aston Villa with some less attractive fixtures to try and stay up. But who knows what might happen and even if these games will be played out.

In other sad news, Dickie Dowsett, former AFCB striker and commercial manager passed away at 88 on Sunday. Dickie's head features as the iconic figure on the AFCB crest to this day and is the sixth-highest all time goal scorer for AFCB. AFCB has Dickie's obituary on the website and The Bournemouth Echo also has a good piece on Dickie.

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