Monday, 12 October 2020

Why is Lerma thriving in the Championship?

With two goals already to his name this season, there has been a bit of a rebirth of Jefferson Lerma at AFCB. He has always been seen as the tough-tackling hardened midfielder who will commit a bad foul with regularity, but now he has started to become a bit of a marksman for goals.

Lerma has found a new lease of life with his goals.

I have to credit not only Jefferson but Jason Tindall and his coaches for bringing out another side in Jefferson's game. The opposition's box always seemed almost beyond Jefferson's limit except when he could go forward for set-pieces. We have seen a couple of strikes this season though from the edge of the area that have basically been passed into the net by Jefferson and he seems comfortable in going forward and scoring goals now.

The crosses Jack Stacey and Adam Smith have supplied have been very profitable for the whole team, but Lerma has been picking up positions where he is arriving on well-timed funs into the box. It's something that we didn't see under Eddie Howe and we are seeing a different side to Lerma's game.

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Bournemouth hadn't been seeing central midfielders scoring many goals in recent seasons, but I think Gosling and Lerma are being helped by the runs of Danjuma. Danjuma's runs are particularly penetrating and with his pace defenders are not tracking other Bournemouth players quite as closely when Danjuma is in full flow. The balance of the side seems much better than for some time, and with Lerma having time in the Championship to pick his spot he has been very accurate.

Perhaps Bournemouth played too much for Callum Wilson and Josh King to get on the end of moves in the past. With Solanke, we have a striker that doesn't always think shoot for himself when he sees other players in a good position. But Lerma especially seems to want to take responsibility for having a shot, and for the moment, he and Gosling are cashing in on Bournemouth attacks. I'm not sure Leram expects to keep scoring, but it wouldn't be a big surprise if he or Gosling got to double figures for goals this season.

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Previous post on Cherry Chimes - Is Mepham able to step up his game?

In other news, West Ham's £13m bid for Josh King has been turned down reports SkySpots.

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