Gosling frustrated about box decisions

Dan Gosling's interview with BBC Radio Solent after the Sunderland match took on a familiar theme in respect to his clear disappointment at some of the decisions that players were making in and around the box. The players work on that though all the time and, when they are up against international defenders, they must know that they are not going to always find it easy to find a way through.

Dan is focussed on making better decisions in and around the box.

The play makers in the team are the ones that need the quickness of thought and Gosling himself is probably hardest on himself when thinking that there were better decisions to be made at times. My mind goes back to one part of the game in particular though when Junior Stanislas was fed the ball on the edge of the box and might have made one more pass to Arter who was in a great shooting space. Instead Junior shot himself and leaning back put the ball high and wide with a heavy sliced shot. There is no guarantee that Arter would have scored, but players don't get a coupe of seconds to think would it be better if I did this or that. It's more often instinct and on this day some of those instant decisions were just the wrong choices.

The options that Eddie Howe has on the bench included O'Kane and Iturbe, but they did not get a look in on this occasion. Sometimes I do like the directness of Adam Smith and Eunan O'Kane who often just run at the heat of defences to draw fouls and do something different to the switching of play from side to side with possession passing. A little more of that just may open up some of these teams in future games.

I mentioned before the game that AFCB needed to unpick Sunderland's organisation and in the end, it was just a puzzle that slammed shut. The team can find the answers though in future games.

My latest Shoot blogger article is now out - Cherries miss Tommy Elphick.