{"id":10551,"date":"2017-05-12T15:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T14:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thehighertempopress.com\/?p=10551"},"modified":"2017-05-12T09:37:37","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T08:37:37","slug":"brexit-bournemouth-part-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thehighertempopress.com\/2017\/05\/brexit-bournemouth-part-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Brexit Bournemouth Part 19"},"content":{"rendered":"
Before we get the 2019\/2020 season underway, there’s some big news from upstairs:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Our new gaffe is ready for us to move into permanently after two seasons of playing in Hertfordshire and it seats a touch over 20,000 people. I’m excited to see that the ground has been futureproofed with the potential to double in size. Depending on what our attendances are like this season, I might push for expansion sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n
As the kick off beckons, the bookies have priced us up at 36\/1 to win the league, making us eighth favourites:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Although, with us being rated at 30\/1 to be relegated, the consensus seems to be we’re more likely to go down than finish top of the league. Forget that. Empty your kid’s piggy bank. Withdraw your life savings. Remortgage your house. Stick it all on us to win the league. I promise I’ll make you a fortune.<\/p>\n
The board’s miserly attitude towards financing my recruitment has meant that I’ve had to have a bit of a tactical rethink. With only Chambers coming in to replace the outgoing Francis and Oxford, I decide I don’t have the requisite depth to persist with three centre halves. Sure, I’ve got Isaac Hayden and Nat Chalobah who can fill in there, but I’m not exactly blessed with a wealth of options in central midfield either, so I’m not keen on having to rely on them as cover.<\/p>\n
Therefore we revert to a back four. My full-backs were some of my most potent weapons going forward last season, so I keep them on attacking duty in the hopes they can still provide width in the final third from a deeper starting position. I also retain a strike partnership, as I felt that worked well last time round, and a narrow midfield due to my pathological aversion to wingers.<\/p>\n
I opt for a general shape like so:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Obviously that’s quite an attacking system so against tougher opponents, I’ll be switching the FBs to support or defend, and the play-making central midfielders to BWMs, in the hopes of providing more cover for our defence.<\/p>\n
So, with all of that admin taken care of, let’s get to it.<\/p>\n
In a poetic twist, the fixture gods throw us an entirely appropriate opening game of the season: a home tie against Watford. Yes, the first game at our new home is against our former room-mates.<\/p>\n
There’s no room for sentiment and we break in our new surroundings with a scintillating performance. Saido Berahino and Danny Welbeck both score a brace: Saido’s a glancing header from a Taylor cross and a slotted finish from a Welbeck flick on, Welbeck’s from a Berahino square pass across the box and a Sturridge cross. Z\u00e9 Gomes grabs a consolation for the Hornets but it can’t ruin our day.<\/p>\n
We follow that up with a poor performance against Stoke – a 0-0 draw and the nearest we come is a long range Welbeck ping that rebounds to safety off the base of the post. Then it’s back to the Bournemouth Stadium in an early season crunch game against Spurs.<\/p>\n
This honestly felt like one of those matches where the game was conspiring against us. It was all us. One way traffic for the first forty minutes solid. The one time that Spurs actually managed to create a chance, the bastards scored it, of course. Bloody Felipe Anderson with his rocket-fuelled boots butchered Adam Smith for pace and give his side the lead. I kept my cool, told the lads to keep plugging away and we were level within minutes of the restart thanks to Michael Keane, who got his step ladder out at the back post, climbed higher than everyone else, and thumped in Taylor’s corner with his face.<\/p>\n
We then spent the next half an hour battering the door down without quite knocking it off its hinges. We hit the woodwork thrice. We have seven clear cut chances. But it didn’t look like it was quite going to happen. That is until deep into injury time when Lewis Cook thankfully made a lung-busting run off the ball to tap in a Berahino square pass. That immediately felt like a huge result.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Before the next game, we’re greeted with a few exciting announcements. First, we receive a personal record eight call ups to the England squad (the two unlisted players in the message are Wilshere and Taylor):<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Then there was our hotly anticipated Champions League draw which, the one massive club aside, was quite kind. We’re more than capable of progressing into the knock out stages:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But before we get too ahead of ourselves, we have to deal with the more mundane realities of the Premier League grind. Our last game before the international break is against Fulham. You’d be foolish to back a 0-0 here.<\/p>\n
Predictably it lives up to its recent goal-laden heritage. Our inability to string two good performances together also continues as we are absolutely terrible at Craven Cottage. We’re 2-0 down at half time courtesy of a pair of goal from Vinnie McIntosh, a regen on loan from Liverpool with a name like a minor character on EastEnders played by a disgraced former Blue Peter presenter. Despite being woeful in almost every department, we salvage a draw with a right-footed strike by Sturridge from well outside the box (who even knew that was possible?!) and a bit of total football finished off by Lewis Cook:<\/p>\n
It’s thoroughly undeserved, but you know what they say about picking up points when you’re playing poorly. Still not all is lost. United have conceded five goals (a quarter of their tally for the entirety of last season) in the first four games and Spurs and Liverpool have been dropping points. Chelsea and City are both resurgent, but the table has yet to properly take shape in this nascent season.<\/p>\n
We have two weeks to pick up the pieces and I tweak the formation slightly. The internationals are a bit of a mixed bag for us: Saido Berahino wins his first England cap in a 9-0 win against Liechtenstein and scores twice, which is good. Jack Wilshere strains his thigh and is out for a few weeks, which is bad.<\/p>\n
Deadline day comes and goes and we sneak those two loan signings in through the back door. Our next game reunited us with a few of our former players as\u00a0we play against Wolves at home. Just before the game, they send us \u00a31.5 million because Harry Arter has made 10 international appearances since joining them.<\/p>\n
We give them a solid 3-0 pasting. Fresh from his England exploits, Saido dodges Richard Stearman to finish off a sweeping eight-man passing move and then we show our range by scoring a different type of goal entirely, catching them on the counter. Ravel Morrison took a touch on his thigh and rolled one down his shin to finish off\u00a0that move and he then provides a square pass for Daniel Sturridge. It’s a pleasing performance and it probably would have been more comprehensive, had it not been for our old mate Alex Smithies playing\u00a0a blinder. I even manage to give Edwards and Hayden a quick run out to try and get a few minutes in their legs.<\/p>\n
It’s ideal preparation for our first foray into the Champions League. They say you always remember your first and, based on this, I can’t disagree. It’s the big one: Barcelona at home.<\/p>\n
Just think – after spending two seasons crashing on Watford’s sofa, we now have a sexy new ground where we can play against the sexiest team in the world. It was oh -so-nearly a truly magical night as well.<\/p>\n
After a somewhat contentious decision\u00a0given in our favour (Welbz took a big, fat dive) Charlie Taylor stepped up and stroked home a glorious free kick inside the first five minutes. We held onto the lead for an hour, quelling their every attack until they finally broke through. Neymar, whose legs moved faster than anything else I’ve ever seen in the match engine, sprinted sixty yards and rolled the ball across the face of goal for Messi to tap in at the back stick.<\/p>\n
We manage to hold on for the remnants of the game, with Butland particularly heroic. Going into this, I’d essentially written off our games against Barcelona and though that if we could pick up 10 points against Basel and Dynamo we might sneak through. Clinging on to a draw here is very much a bonus point and it’s wonderfully positive start to our big time European adventure. Take a look at that 59% possession stat and weep.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Now it just remains to be seen whether we have sufficient depth in our squad to do a midweek-weekend schedule. A trip to Sunderland is our first hurdle to overcome.<\/p>\n
And, safe to say, it’s not a hurdle that we effortlessly vault over. Instead we stumble into it face first and yet somehow emerge undamaged. Balotelli scores their first with a near post header, and then Patrick Roberts does his stereotypical inside forward thing, cutting in and sending a curling shot past Butland. Welbeck gets us back into the game by gobbling up a rebound in the six-yard box.<\/p>\n
Then the game became the set piece show. Steve Cook grabs a quickfire double from a near post corner and free kick that was crossed in by Lewis Cook after a one-two with Morrison. Miguel Pedro levelled the match from a free kick pass behind our wall, but with time running out, Cook sends a delivery in\u00a0from out wide deep to the far post. Calum Chambers leaps, heads the ball back across the face of goal, and Steve Cook is there to seal his hat-trick and our victory in a mad, frantic game.<\/p>\n