AFC Bournemouth returned to Dean Court over the Easter weekend buoyed by the performance away to Brighton & Hove Albion, which saw the Cherries pick up a 5-0 win, the biggest away victory the Cherries have scored in their top-flight history.
The message from the dressing room would surely have been to put things right after the poor team performance at home against Burnley during the preceding week.
Howe attempted to pick an unchanged side from the one that beat Brighton but suffered an injury to Adam Smith during the warm-up which saw Junior Stanislas step into the less familiar role of right back.
AFC Bournemouth had chances to open the scoring during the first half, most notably Joshua King who blazed over the crossbar when all he had to do was pick his spot and he would have notched the opener.
Another injury to Stanislas saw the introduction of young defender Jack Simpson and he would go on to concede the penalty that ultimately decided the game.
Aleksandar Mitrovic scored the goal which sealed Fulham’s first away win of the season, in late April, after their relegation had already been confirmed.
AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe told afcb.co.uk…
“It was hugely frustrating, especially after last week when we were so good. We started the first half really well and I thought it was going to be a really good day for us.
“…Fulham managed the game well from their perspective. Being 1-0 down, we wanted a quick game while they wanted a slow game and that led to lots of restarts which was frustrating.
“We have to look at ourselves and we didn’t do well enough with the ball. We were too keen to try to get it forward to score. We made some bad decisions when we did get into the final third.
“On another day, we’d have scored three or four goals, so that leaves us hugely annoyed with ourselves. We’ve scored goals all season so it’s not usually an issue for us, but in this game it was…”
Your say…
james_AFCB wrote…
Not “one of those days” at all. That would imply that things just didn’t fall for us and we didn’t get the rub of the green. We were rubbish. Awful. Zero ideas, zero urgencies and zero movements. 1 point from Newcastle, Burnley and Fulham at home. You can blame injuries all you want, but if that lack of desire transfers over into next season then we’re in real trouble. – Join the conversation, click here.
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