THIS is a slightly unusual Premier League season. Not only are a lot of the bigger sides going through periods of transition and self-doubt, but there is no obvious weak side.
Norwich and Aston Villa haven’t found things easy and may end up going down, but both have had their moments and offer sufficient threat going forward to think they could survive. Watford, after a miserable start, are improving rapidly under Nigel Pearson. And with nobody cast adrift – although Norwich are now seven points from safety – that makes life anxious for the Premier League’s large middle-class. After four largely untroubled season in the Premier League, Bournemouth find themselves in relegation danger.
A run of eight defeats in 10 games has left them third bottom and for the first time since his return to the club from Burnley in 2012, there have been mumblings about Eddie Howe. The question about ambition and whether he might perhaps have moved on always seems slightly dispiriting, a facet of the modern belief that nobody can ever actually be happy doing what they are doing but must always keep straining to bigger and supposedly better things. There’s no reason why a manager and club who are a good match shouldn’t stay together: loyalty can be a virtue rather than a sign of apathy.
Eddie Howe on Bournemouth's season so far…
"We've been knocked quite a lot" pic.twitter.com/ppctpdhft2
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) January 2, 2020
That said, as the case of Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham demonstrated, there can come a point, particularly when a club is operating near the limit of its means and there are no new heights to strain towards, at which everything just becomes a little familiar, when a manager can no longer motivate or inspire players who have heard it all before. Perhaps Howe is experiencing something similar – although from the outside that is very hard to tell.
More significant, though, is probably that Bournemouth have had a terrible time with injuries this season, David Brooks, whose thrusts from midfield were such an exciting part of their play last season, hasn’t managed a game yet this campaign after ankle surgery in July. The left-back Charlie Daniels needed knee surgery at the end of August and hasn’t played since.
But it was at the beginning of December when the problems really began to mount up. The right-back Adam Smith has an ankle problem and hasn’t played since the defeat at Crystal Palace on December 3. Four days later, Nathan Ake was forced off with a hamstring injury 35 minutes into the 3-0 defeat at Liverpool. It’s hoped the pair of them might be back before the end of the month. The left-winger Arnaut Danjuma completed the Liverpool game but hasn’t played since because of ankle trouble. Neither Josh King nor Jack Stacey has played since December 28 because of hamstrung issues.
5 – There were just five shots in today's match between Bournemouth and Burnley, the fewest recorded in a Premier League game since detailed shot collection began in 2003-04. Stratagem. pic.twitter.com/bb1lT4pNcm
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) December 21, 2019
That’s seven players out, three of whom would be considered among Bournemouth’s small core of stars, enough for any club to deal with. Confidence has clearly been hit hard, as was evident in the limp defeat to West Ham United on New Year’s Day. That’s the game that should really worry Bournemouth fans – albeit with the mitigation they were playing a side buoyed by the appointment of David Moyes.
January offers a relatively gentle run of fixtures – the other two members of the bottom three, then Brighton, Villa, Sheffield United and Burnley. Certainly there needs to be a major improvement before the end of February because Bournemouth then face five of the Big Six, plus Wolves and Leicester in a run of nine games. In that sense, the worst of the injury crisis has hit just at the wrong time, weakening Bournemouth for a string of games they might usually consider winnable. At least some of their injured players should start to return by the end of January but there is a need to put points on the board sooner rather than later.
Bournemouth have always been an oddity as a Premier League club. Their average crowd is under 11,000 yet their wage bill is the 12th highest in the league. As a project they work only because of investment from the Opalus Trust, which represents the family of the Russian businessman Maxim Demin. They can never be self-sustaining and that raises serious questions as to what may happen were they to go down.
And that is a prospect Bournemouth must now seriously begin to contemplate. It may be that their current plight is largely the result of bad luck with injuries – and in a season when the Premier League has a big middle – but if they are to survive, there needs to be major improvement soon.
