Tuesday 12 March 2013

Match preview: Stevenage v AFCB

The Cherries go to Stevenage Borough FC on Tuesday night still hoping to break this crippling run of bad results that has left fans rather shell-shocked considering only a few weeks ago we were top of the league. Stevenage is no easy place to visit as they are a hard battling, physical team that have done exceedingly well in their first two seasons in League One and they have a decent home record.

Despite only sitting in 15th place in the league, Stevenage are a good side that can beat any of the top teams on their day and Eddie will know that they will be just as eager for the points as Bournemouth. Their home form faltered at the end of February and early March with defeats against first Oldham and then Colchester Utd, but they bounced back with a home win against promotion chasing Brentford on 5 March and you can't get a much bigger warning for the Cherries than that.

The defeat for Stevenage in their last match, against a resurgent Peston North End, will not have made things easier for the Cherries as Gary Smith looks for a reaction from his team. The goal scoring threats for Stevenage will come up front from Lucas Akins (9 this season) and Marcus Harber (7).  Dune, Shroot and Tansey are also regular contributors with goals from midfield.

The crowd is expected to be fairly small at around 3000 and no doubt supporters and players will have to battle a reasonable amount of inclement weather tonight if the match goes ahead.

Those that make the journey should see Harry Arter back in the starting line up and while you can say Ryan Allsop needs to catch the ball more often, rather than parrying it away, he is likely to keep his goalkeeping shirt for this game, having not done too much wrong in his home debut last game.

Cherry fans were not so pleased by Grabban's performance on Saturday and perhaps Tubbs will get another run out having netted against Doncaster. I thought Pitman's work rate was high last game but its goals we need now.

This is going to be another tough one for the boys and it won't be pretty. But a result is what we want. UTCIAD!

If you fancy having a go at predicting the result Tweet Cherry Chimes at peterbell19. Sorry there are no prizes, but no one has got a score right yet which has been posted - you could be the first!

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