Thursday 21 May 2020

Comebacks are part of what have made AFCB great

Many fans will have watched the Everton 'repicked game last night in the 2015/16 season with Funes Mori and Lukaku giving Everton a 2-0 half-time lead, before Adam Smith and Junior Stanislas hit back in the last 100 minutes of normal time to make it 2-2. It looked all over then when Ross Barkley made it 2-3 in extra-time, but Bournemouth just never let up in that game and Junior Stanislas denied an Everton win with a 90+8 minute equaliser.
More comebacks are what we crave
Those sort of comebacks became second nature to the Cherries in the early Premier League days. What we would give for a few turnarounds in games like that today. But what makes a good comeback? This game was a special one not because it was against a big named team, and it wasn't even a derby. But there was a gritted feeling about the game which transmits through the crowd and that atmosphere generates the magic.

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What excited everybody though was the lateness of the goals. It was like a basket ball match - you go down our end, then we go and attack your end. It was like school boy football and Bournemouth have always had that in their armoury if they do get attacked, they would look to hit back straight away. I am not sure if it is an Eddie Howe doctrine or if the players just feed off the crowd. What we can say is that comebacks made you want to go again next week to see whether they could do anything even more unlikely.

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That's it. The underdog and doing the impossible. The unthinkable. There was that about AFCB in that first Premier League season and every match was massive because Bournemouth simply hadn't been in the Premier League before. We may sadly have lost some of that magic now. Eddie Howe would have loved to generate that crowd involvement in the remaining games of this season, but we'll have to watch from afar and games like the Everton 3-3 draw just reminded me of how sterile the games will seem as we try and close the 2019-20 season behind closed doors.

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