Tuesday 12 January 2021

Can AFCB grab back second place by beating Millwall?

While it has been a good couple of first weeks of the New Year for AFCB, there is increasing pressure to keep winning to keep pace with the leaders. Bournemouth will need to change their starting 11 from the weekend, but this game against Millwall gives the team a chance to get back into the automatic promotion places which is a big incentive.

AFCB get ready to take on Millwall

Millwall have been fairly decent on the road. They drew all of the away games in November with Norwich City among them. More recently, they beat Bristol City 0-2 away in December. They are also coming off the back of an FA Cup an away win against Boreham Wood.


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Jed Wallace leads Millwall's goalscoring table with six goals, but the whole team pretty much has a goal or more to their name. Among the players we could see is former Cherry Connor Mahoney who has scored twice this season, but he has been injured of late. Scott Malone is also still at Millwall and has a brace against his name in the goals column. It is noticeable that Millwall haven't scored more than two goals in a game until you go back to the Carabao Cup win they had against Southend in mid-September. They don't get beaten that heavily often either, Middlesbrough have done best against them at home with a 3-0 win back in mid-December.

Gary Rowett is the Millwall manager having replaced Neil Harris in October 2019. Rowett is a well-travelled Championship manager having been at Birmingham City, Derby Co and Stoke City. A few AFCB fans may also know that former Cherry Adam Barrat is the assistant manager at Millwall.

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Bournemouth could well bring back Asmir Begovic, Junior Stanislas, Dominic Solanke, Jefferson Lerma and Lewis Cook for this game. These players have had a rest and probably help give AFCB a bit more of a fear factor. Jason Tindall has not talked about Arnaut Danjuma in his pre-match press conference which indicates to me that Danjuma is really struggling to get back having been out for a fair amount of time since the Nottingham Forest game. There will be an interesting call between Adam Smith and Jack Stacey, but I'm not expecting too many surprises with the Cherries' starting line-up. Dan Gosling looks a doubt having been subbed early in the Oldham game and it may be the bench for King if Stanislas is deemed fit enough to play.

Possible AFCB line-up

AFCB Subs:  Dennis, Carter-Vickers, Stacey, Billing,
Ofobrgh, Riquelme, Anthonly, Surridge, King

In other news, AFCB have a home the in the FA Cup fourth round against Crawley Town who beat Leeds Utd last round and in the fifth round the winner plays either Burnley or Fulham, so a  Premier League team for the fifth round.

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