AFC Bournemouth travelled to Middlesbrough for a 12.30 pm kick-off thanks to television selection from Sky Sports.
The 500 or so Cherries supporters, many of whom will have left Dean Court at 3 am this morning on the supporter’s coaches, which were made free by AFC Bournemouth, will have been buoyed by the news that both Lloyd Kelly and Jordan Zemura returned to the AFC Bournemouth back four.
But whilst a bit of familiarity returned to the defence, it was a rare outing for both Gavin Kilkenny and Lewis Cook alongside each other in central midfield with Jefferson Lerma suspended and Ben Pearson left out altogether.
Up front and it was the preferred trio of Jaidon Anthony, Dominic Solanke and Ryan Christie, who all had guilt-edged chances to open the scoring in the first half, which ultimately cost the visitors.
After the game, Parker told the Daily Echo…
“First half it was very good. Three massive chances really, which we should score from or should put that away…”
“…We came out second half. We looked second best to a lot of things. Duels, challenges. Every single duel we went into, they came out on top of.
“It gives them a platform and a structure in the game and we struggled at that point really. Overall, disappointed with the result and disappointed with the second-half performance.
“They came out aggressive, which we expected but really the three chances are very big for us – we needed to execute, which we didn’t manage to do.
“Second half we didn’t look like the team I wanted us to look like…”
Man of the match against Middlesbrough
Travers
Kilkenny
Kelly
Cahill
Billing
Someone else
Written by billythekid
Well earlier in the season those chances in the first half would probably have ended up in the net.
Things didn’t go for Anthony today, ending with that penalty when it looked like he fouled their player just outside the box but he continued into the box and went down.
The second half at times we were sloppy and gave the ball away a number of times.
Good to see players back from injury, but we didn’t see Zemura firing on all cylinders which was to be expected after the time he has been out.
For me one person didn’t put a foot wrong and Travers was my MOM.
We're extremely disappointed with the defeat today.
To the 530 fans who got up early to travel, thank you for your support and we're so, so grateful ❤️ pic.twitter.com/okVZRQMCqj
— AFC Bournemouth 🍒 (@afcbournemouth) December 18, 2021
Unbelievable effort from the traveling fans with all that is going on, it really is appreciated by us all.
We will need to work even harder to be back to the level that we expect to be at as a group #afcb pic.twitter.com/lrNxA9ViK6
— Gary Cahill (@GaryJCahill) December 18, 2021
https://twitter.com/lloydkelly4/status/1472243514624913412?s=20
Your say…
afcb_rednblack wrote…
All the intensity that we saw in the early part of the season seems to have dissipated and I do think we need to bolster the squad upfront if we can in January to give us another kind of option.
When I think back to how we played under Eddie when we were challenging in the championship we were unbeatable in terms of intensity and pace, we consistently tore teams apart. Somehow we need to try and recapture that. – Join the conversation, click here.
