As AFC Bournemouth approach the business end of the season, the Cherries have found themselves in an unusual position, they have remained in the automatic promotion places whilst either not playing at all due to a couple of postponements due to storm damage both at Dean Court and at Swansea’s home stadium or by not playing consistently very well.
On Tuesday night a point against one of the struggling sides in the Championship was enough to see AFC Bournemouth return to second place in the table, whilst still having three games in hand on Huddersfield Town and Blackburn Rovers and two games in hand over Sheffield United.
However with raised expectation levels around the “Dean Court faithful”, some supporters have allowed their frustrations to turn to boos and jeers in recent games, responding both to perceived “negative play” as Parker’s side attempt some patient build-up, or loss of possession when the Cherries attempt some more direct play.
Audible boos followed the full-time whistle against Peterborough United and Parker confirmed that he found it all rather puzzling.
Asked by the Daily Echo whether “the boos at full-time were to do with pressure or expectation”, AFC Bournemouth head coach Scott Parker told the Daily Echo…
“…I’ll be honest with you, I’m not really sure. It’s a bit puzzling.
“But that’s the way it’s probably been. I get there’s probably been a bit of expectation. We’ve probably been a little bit of a victim of what we’ve done.
“I will never be critical of these players. If they lose games, they don’t lose it through a lack of fight and a lack of will and determination.
“That’s the way it is. We sit second in this division, three kids in this team from a category three academy.
“I think if any single person at the beginning of this season would have said we are going to get to March 8 and we are going to sit second in the division, we are going to have three young kids in the team – every single person would have bit their hand off. Including myself.
“But football is football and the world we are in is the world we are in and people forget that. People just see it for that and I understand that a little bit – that’s what we need to handle.
“At this present moment in time, my worry with the team is I need to work out how to handle that better for them, for their sake. That’s where we need to get out of that.”
Should the crowd boo the players?
Yes
No
Your say…
Gloria Hunter wrote…
There are some really irritating people in the crowd, complaining when we are playing quite well. Complaining that the ball is always passed to the left when in the first half it was passed to the right much more. People complaining about too many sideways/backwards passes and in the next breath, complaining that we’re hitting too many long balls. This kind of thing IS really tiring and it puts everyone in a bad mood.
Having said that, the play is tedious a lot of the time and that stops the fans cheering as much as they otherwise would, so the constant moaners drown everyone else out.
New Forest Cherry said…
A few people near me shouted at Lloyd Kelly to launch it, he eventually did……….into the crowd. What did they expect?
If anyone thinks getting on the players’ backs has any positive impact on their performance, they are very wrong.
Some of our fans were embarrassing.
wimborne cherries added…
The immediate jumping on some players backs is absolutely pathetic.
Players will be nervous to do a pass if this continues (more than they are now!)!
Boo if you think you’re paying to watch entertainment and you’re not entertained but who is that going to benefit? I pay to support my football team.
SteveJonesLegend wrote…
For what it’s worth, I thought we were good until they scored their goal… and for whatever reason, we seemed to be a bit shell shocked by it… Up until that point, we moved the ball quick… we created chance after chance and at the point of 0-0 it looked like there was only one team in it… Their goal was down to a moment of sloppiness and massively against the run of play… The half as a whole didn’t deserve the response it got…
The problem we had second half was not capitalising on the period after we scored… The team had got the crowd onside, we looked like we’d go on and score more… for about 10 minutes and then the game just faded out and the more we tried the more things just didn’t work… The late subs, I’ll admit we’re baffling…
There are some individuals that need to take long hard looks at themselves and come out with more on Saturday, but it’s football… P’Boro set their stall out from the first minute and fair play to them… they didn’t come here to sit deep for 90 mins as we expected… when they broke they looked lively and did cause us the odd issue… We should have dealt with it better…
The reality is again though that those who are determined to believe we’re awful and that Parker needs to go only remember the last 10 mins of the first half, and then focus on what went wrong in the second… But for large parts of the first and bits of the second… we were not as bad as some on here like to make out… We were frustrating yes, but I didn’t think the players deserved what they got… Especially when walking towards the NS… It’s really going to make them want to come out and play on Saturday in front of us…
And if anyone thinks that the club is going to sack Parker when we’re second in the Championship… We’d be the laughing stock of the EFL… Entitlement in its extreme… – Join the conversation, click here.
