Bit hasty this. They're having a bad run and haven't been the Bournemouth who first came into the league for a while, but it was only a few weeks back they were in 6th place .
The league is mental. 2 wins for any team between 8th and 18th puts them into European contention!
They'll win 3 in a row and finish 12th.
Brooks returning will boost them.
Agreed.
In the Premier League, there is a group of clubs who over a number of seasons appear to have established themselves through being, what our gaffer calls, "spike teams". They can go on runs of performances, with results to match, where they look like relegation fodder, but will then steady the ship with a burst of results - often with back-to-back wins - that keeps them clear of real trouble.
For instance, Palace are generally tedious but appear adroit at targeting matches that they can profit from, as in the recent win at Burnley which they backed up by grinding a win against Bournemouth and a point at Watford; Southampton can be a complete embarrassment against Leicester and others but made sure that when it came to the crunch, by hook or crook, they got the points against Watford and Norwich; and Newcastle can be utterly awful most of the time but then have 2 or 3 games in a row where they reap a load of points that they arguably don't deserve.
I've no doubt that at some stage, when they get players back, Bournemouth will do the same and string together a run of results that keeps them clear of trouble. They did exactly the same last season.
We're not a spike team, as Wilder keeps saying. Our performances must be amongst the most consistent in the league. You might argue that the only 2 games out of 15 this season, when our standards have dropped off, were Watford and Everton. Our lads have turned up and performed pretty much every match.
The concern is that the points we have gathered don't reflect the level of performances; we've left loads of points out on the pitch. Wilder knows and, judging by Egan's interview this week, the players know it. We might easily, probably should, have had 6 to 8 points more from the games we've played.
We're unbeaten in 7 away games but 9 points is a meagre reward for how we've performed. As Wilder says, they've all been 'winning draws'; we've not nicked something that we didn't deserve. Other sides by contrast can turn up 3 times in a week, be awful the rest of the time, and match our points haul.
