Howe hails Bournemouth’s belief as fightback secures another win
If Bournemouth had showcased all their slick, counter-attacking qualities in defeating Chelsea in midweek, then here was an example of their grit.
Trailing to a back-post header from the minuscule Xherdan Shaqiri, Eddie Howe’s side looked both deflated and exhausted before producing a secondhalf fightback that continues their excellent run of form. For the first time, Bournemouth have gone seven con- secutive games without defeat in the Premier League.
Having looked so unsure of themselves at the start of the season, they will now be casting ambitious looks up the table rather than glancing perilously below. “Would we have come back earlier in the season? I am not so sure,” said Howe. “But the fact that we are in the middle of this run and producing the performances that we have done, I think it is in the back of the mind that we can do this.”
Strikes from two substitutes, Joshua King and Lys Mousset, were enough to turn this encounter in their favour and hand Paul Lambert his first defeat as Stoke City manager. Four points and two clean sheets from the Scot’s first two games had raised expectations, but here his defenders undermined an excellent first-half performance.
“Everything was great,” Lambert said. “We looked really good and I think everybody saw that. It was the second goal that really hurt us.”
It will be doubly frustrating for Lambert considering the way in which Stoke had begun the game. Barely five minutes had passed before new signing Badou Ndiaye, who was an impressively domineering presence in midfield on his Premier League debut, curled in a deep cross to the far post, where Shaqiri did not even need to jump as he nodded the simplest of headers into the corner of the net.
Lambert said in the week that the Senegal midfielder, recruited from Galatasaray for £14 million, had been signed to add “devilment” to this Stoke side, and there was no shortage of attitude. One first-half scuffle ended with him shoving Bournemouth’s Dan Gosling in the chest, and he was soon booked for a comically cynical challenge on Jordon Ibe.
Bournemouth were hardly banging on the Stoke door until deep into the second half, when a horrendous mixup between Joe Allen and Kurt Zouma allowed King to sweep a fine finish into the far corner.
The memory of Shaqiri’s opener now wiped from memory, Mousset strolled in unmarked at the back post to head home his first Premier League goal from Ibe’s curling free-kick.