PALACE HEAP THE PRESSURE ON HOWE’S BOURNEMOUTH
NOT ONE member of this Bournemouth starting XI were alive the last time the BBC showed live top-flight football.
And after this chastening, concerning 90 minutes, you could forgive Eddie Howe’s side should they choose to avoid last night’s re-run on Match Of The Day.
Here at the Vitality, the increased exposure served only to show a wider audience just how difficult the next few weeks will be for this struggling Bournemouth side.
And just how brilliant a job Roy Hodgson continues to do at Crystal Palace. Again his side are looking up, rather than over their shoulder, after a controlled performance and a clinical victory.
For Bournemouth, the only way is up, too. If the end of the coronavirus shutdown was supposed to represent a new start in their bid to beat the drop, this felt depressingly like the old.
The damage was done in the first half, when Luka Milivojevic opened t he scoring with a delightful free- kick, before Jordan Ayew gave Palace breathing space.
With this win, they move in to the top half. Bournemouth, meanwhile, remain in the bottom three. Time is running out.
The 105-day hiatus will not have done much for blood pressure in these parts. Nor will the final hours of waiting, during which both Watford and Brighton picked up valuable points. Suddenly the stakes in this sprint to avoid the drop only swelled further.
One blessing for Bournemouth was that the lay-off spelt an end to the curse on David Brooks and his troublesome ankle. Before last night, he had not played a league game since April 2019. Since then, only two rounds of surgery and 14 months of frustration.
Bournemouth have missed his invention this season and the hope is the Wales international will now fill the hole left by Ryan Fraser, who has played his last game for the club after rejecting a short-term contract extension.
It was a bold call by Howe to discard him for the final 10 days of his stay. On this evidence, it may not prove a wise one.
Not that Brooks wasted any time making his mark. During an opening period coated in rust, he showed rare glimpses of class. His first telling contribution, however, came at the other end.
For all their attacking shortcomings, Bournemouth’s biggest issues have come in front of their own goal. Before the shutdown, they had gone 12 games without adding to a league-low tally of four clean sheets. And here, it took just 12 minutes for this ‘new normal’ to feel strangely similar. Brooks was the fall guy, he brought down Wilfried Zaha and from just outside the box, Milivojevic’s effort crept beyond Aaron Ramsdale. From there, Palace began to purr. Passes grew in zip and in number; Bournemouth were chasing shadows in the setting sun and soon they were staring down the barrel. Midway through the half, Zaha fed the overlapping Patrick van Aanholt. The left-back’s pass across goal bobbled straight into the path of Ayew who controlled his finish brilliantly. When he scores, Palace do not lose. And his goal allowed them to adopt their favourite position: two banks of four. Bournemouth had become the first team to let Palace score twice in the first half of a league game since May 2019. The opponents that day? Bournemouth. And any hopes Howe’s side harboured of turning this game were dealt another blow after the break when Josh King was taken off with an ankle injury. VAR had a look at the challenge by Gary Cahill but replays showed he won the ball.
To their credit, Bournemouth pressed and pressed. Their attitude has never been in question, only their ability to find a way out of this mess.
Against Palace’s deep defence, they found little joy. Callum Wilson was a spectator for much of the night and Brooks lasted just an hour before cramp struck.
Minutes later their first effort on target came courtesy of a Nathan Ake header. At that point Palace had managed just two.
Perhaps nothing, nor anyone watching on the BBC, could better illustrate the problems that Howe must solve.