MAGICAL MARCUS IS BOURNE AGAIN
‘Fantastic’ Tavernier hits third goal in four games
MARCUS TAVERNIER is fast becoming Bournemouth’s goalscoring talisman – now he needs to stay fit.
The Cherries midfielder settled a close relegation battle with his third goal in four games before making a limping exit.
But boss Gary O’neil, celebrating a first Premier League win since November, believes there is no danger of another long spell on the sidelines. Tavernier missed eight games with a hamstring problem.
O’neil said: “It’s not a recurrence, I was going to take him off anyway.
“It is the other hamstring. It was tightening up a little bit and he thought there might have been a contact.
“Tav did well to get his goal but you could see he has been out for a while. He’s a big player for us and big players come up with moments.
We’ve got two weeks training into him. He’s fantastic.”
Bournemouth moved out of the bottom three but O’neil was still not completely satisfied.
He said: “In the first half we were more passive than I want us to be.
“The second half I made a couple of tweaks to help the boys be more aggressive but there were still things I would have liked to have done better.”
Wolves counterpart Julen Lopetegui was critical of his players
BOURNEMOUTH: too. He said: “It is negative because we lost. It was a bad day.
“The key moment was when we conceded the goal. It can happen but it’s how you react.
“We forgot to play football. We have to play more calmly. We had a lot of situations in the box.”
It may be a statement of the bleeding obvious but Wolves’ big weakness this season has been in front of goal.
The top scorers are Ruben Neves and Daniel Podence on five each and no-one else has more than one.
To make the point, there was plenty of attacking intent from the opening minute but not much of a goal threat. Having had most of the possession, there was an air of optimism around the place. But
Molineux, rocking for most of the first half, went deathly quiet as Dominic
Solanke’s neat whipped-in cross was met by an alert
Tavernier.