The Premier League will no doubt believe project re-start has been a success for the top flight of English football following the lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. However, AFC Bournemouth would not agree with two defeats against Crystal Palace and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
The back-to-back home victories against Aston Villa and Brighton & Hove Albion back in January feel like a distant memory, as the Cherries have since slumped to five defeats in six games and remain in the bottom three on goal difference.
The relegation picture still remains remarkably tight, with the Cherries, Aston Villa and West Ham United all level on points, with Watford (who do have a game to play at the time of writing) just one point clear.
The performance against Wolverhampton Wanderers on Wednesday night was an improvement upon the defeat to Crystal Palace last Saturday, but the Cherries still looked short of attacking ideas and failed to register a single shot on target during the narrow 1-0 defeat.
Confidence amongst the squad is low, that’s pretty clear and it has been confirmed by one of the more senior members of the squad.
MOTM against Wolves
Adam Smith
Stanislas
Ake
No one
AFC Bournemouth defender Adam Smith told the Daily Echo…
“It’s the most difficult time of my career – and probably everyone in that changing room.
“It’s the losing streak. It’s just so difficult in each game to keep that mentality and we just needed a bit of luck, I think.”
"We've got to keep going, we know it's tight down there."
Post-match thoughts from @AdamSmith912 💬#afcb 🍒 pic.twitter.com/CdmHks7iQO
— AFC Bournemouth 🍒 (@afcbournemouth) June 25, 2020
https://www.instagram.com/p/CB1Uf5Rjw96/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Your say…
Tinpot Club wrote…
We changed the way we played at the start of the 18/19 season. Even that 5-2 win against Marseille was after the shift to this style.
This was really effective for the first few months of that season until the 2-1 defeat at Newcastle. After that, we had been figured out and despite freak results at home to Chelsea, away to Brighton and a 3-3 at St Mary’s, we hardly scored again that season.
This season has been almost a carbon copy. A few tweaks in pre-season, the emergence of Rico and a few good results to start the campaign. Then Newcastle away again. For 25 mins we played some great football went a goal up then stopped playing. We basically haven’t started playing again since.
The only positive omen is we have Newcastle up next. They were responsible for the start of our rot, can a victory next week be the long-awaited return of our mojo? – Join the conversation, click here.
