We offered Mahrez the chance to score!

AFC Bournemouth were just seconds away from taking all three points from the game against Leicester City at the King Power Stadium.

Riyad Mahrez scored a free kick from distance to share the points.

Question marks will be raised by Steve Cook needlessly diving in to gift the home side a free kick and questions will be raised on the defending of the free kick from at least 35 yards.

AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe told afcb.co.uk…

‘…Credit to the moment that Mahrez produced, in my mind I’m analysing the wall, giving away the free-kick in the first place and those thoughts are flashing through my mind at the time…’

🔥 SCENES! 🔥

Riyad Mahrez saves the day for Leicester with the last kick of the game and it went off in the Soccer Saturday studio! https://t.co/PP0DnzPXAL

? Soccer Saturday (@SoccerSaturday) March 3, 2018

So what did the Cherries fans think?

Your Say…

tednphil: Just seen a still pic of Mahrez free kick. We only had 3 in wall? Looked like we offered Mahrez the chance to score!

dragonm8: The wall should have been positioned well enough whereby that strike was not an option.

It was a quality free kick, but we could have closed that option down.

Jim_AFCB: Having seen a replay that someone kindly tweeted… that ball was going 3 yards wide when it was first hit. Mahrez put one hell of a lot of swazz on it.

We just have to accept that we were undone by a bit of brilliance there. Not sure one can lay the blame at anyone for that.

Silent AFCB: How many do you want in the wall then? We needed guys to defend from a cross as well. Every single one of their free kicks from similar positions this season have gone to the back post and back across goal, so we had to be prepared for that.

It’s so far out that it probably would have been better to have no wall and a more central position for Begovic, rather than more people.

Grumpy G: Would Boruc have saved the free kick or set the wall up better?

wallmth: It was a great free kick ! Watched it a few times ,we could have had a couple more in the wall but the likelihood from that distance was he would float it in for players to run on to and that’s what I think our lot were expecting .

davygravy: I feel the Mahrez goal was fantastic, hats off to him for his skill rather than pick holes in what we did. The wall wasn’t too badly positioned, I would guess that 9/10 times, the taker goes over the wall towards the top corner, giving the keeper an added second or two to get across and push it over. The fact Mahrez bends it like he did, was both unexpected [ see our players jumping ] and highly skilled. A huge bend on that.

There has also been talk on BT Sport Panel, not just today but previously, how a wall can sometimes get in the way of a keeper if there are too many in it. When the free kick is at distance, the keeper should perhaps keep the shot clear, as it would need to be spot on to beat him from 25 yards. Let the taker have a free shot but the keeper to have a clear look at the ball.

So I think we weren’t really to blame there, sometimes you just need to give the taker all the credit for annoyingly good skill.

Join the conversation here.