#afcb 0 v 2 #pusb

I think we will look back at tonight’s game and eventually realise that we owe Coventry City our thanks.

For tonight they showed that you don’t need to bully or fill your defence to get results away from home – what you do is look at the players you’ve got, decide what skills / attributes each player has then set up to play to your strengths.

To reiterate – don’t worry about what THEY can do – let them worry about you!!

EH made some changes for this game which raised a few eyebrows: Pugh not in the squad, Pitman dropped for Tubbs and Fletcher on the bench, 90 minutes too late

Coventry started the brighter after a lengthy delay for treatment, when Baker surged down the left sent 2 defenders the wrong way but then greedily shot wide instead of crossing.

This encouraged the Coventry fans, who were in fine voice, until a Ritchie cross from the left was smashed point blank by Tubbs for their keeper to make an amazing reaction save.

On 18 minutes O’Kane sprinted through the middle and a perfectly paced pass sent Grabban through. He controlled the ball, jinked past a defender but shot straight at the keeper.

As we all held our heads in our hands, a worse miss was to come a minute later. A woeful back header had Tubbs sprinting through one on one chasing a bouncing ball. The keeper was in no man’s land but instead of lobbing like we all expected, he elected to pass it past the keeper, and into the side netting.

Still, we were creating chances. For me the big difference was Fogden. With him on the pitch – he runs like crazy. That encourages others to do the same and before you know it, we’re winning balls back and giving the opposition no time on the ball – a little like Sheffield did to us.

We also had better movement up front which helped to create space – such a shame we don’t have a Leon Clarke to make use of the space

Jalal then went from hero to almost zero in the space of a couple of minutes. Firstly saving impressively against Moussa before almost letting Clarke take it off his feet as he took an age to clear a ball – a real “He’s behind you” moment

Then, in the 6 minutes of injury time, a ball was pumped up to Clarke. It was him against 2 defenders. Both defenders looked to each other to clear, both backed away, and let Clarke brush off one, run past the other and smash the ball past Jalal.

He’d threatened all half but such weak defending did make us wonder if Painter had relatives in the team

HT 0-1

The second half started and clearly Howe had read the riot act as the team came out with fire in their bellies.

The possession was all Bournemouth’s but we simply do not have any one on the team confident of striking for goal or a striker with any heading prowess which caused two problems:

1 We’d take so long messing about on the wings trying to get the perfect angle for the perfect cross that by the time it was sent in Coventry had regrouped, or

2 We’d open Coventry up, run at the goal, sometimes all the way to the six yard box but instead of going for goal we’d try to pick out an impossible pass – which would be cut out and cleared.

Either of these situations would then result in a Coventry break away and Jalal often had to be on his toes to repel such quick counter attacks.

That said – 16 goal attempts for Bournemouth shows that we had more than enough chances to bury this game, but in all honesty we just never looked like scoring.

On 83 minutes one such Coventry attack had the ball sent down the right. A cross was sent over towards Grabban. As it bounced the sneaky Coventry fans started whistling the theme tune to the Harlem Globe Trotters which bemused Grabban enough to slap the ball down, catch the rebound and shoot a 3 pointer from the D – well, not quite, but a clear penalty.

I’ve only seen Jalal save 1 penalty before, against Wigan, and even then the rebound was knocked in. No such suspense today as the pen was tucked away by the impressive Baker.

We still had time for Pitman to throw all his toys out of the pram as Arter insisted on taking a free-kick instead of him (clearly not the same understanding with Howe as for pens). Unfortunately for Arter he’ll probably hear about it all week as the ball struck row Z.

Summary – We still look shaky at the back without Elphick and Daniels and we don’t attack with enough speed or conviction to worry these better sides. We need our strikers to regain form and confidence else it won’t matter what starlets we have in the build-up – they will always be under pressure

Star Man – Ritchie – Looked much more comfortable at LB and especially in the first half fired in some excellent crosses that were unfortunately too good for the strikers

Extra thanks – to the 3 man Sherpa team that helped us get to and from the car – We’ll try to park a little closer next time…..