Thursday 21 January 2016

Is Juan Iturbe ready to scrap for his place?

The first sight AFCB fans had of Juan Iturbe was a second half appearance against West Ham which did not turn out as well as he or AFCB would have liked. Juan managed to have a few runs and had a shot turned round the post, but if Eddie Howe sees him as an impact player that can conjure up a goal with a moment of magic, it will be very interesting to see in which games Juan is played.
Juan may find he gets to play ball with the Black Cats this weekend.
Juan has much on his plate in having just moved to the town and having a new club to get used to, as well as a strange language and a new way of playing to learn in this AFCB side. It was perhaps a risk to drop him in at the deep end against a top six side like West Ham, but it may make it easier for him in away. It could arguably more difficult to see a new player find his feet in what will be a real scrap up at the Stadium of Light where there will be no hiding place. He'll find that he won't get much time on the ball and it is the pace of the English game that I believe is the hardest thing for foreign players to adapt to straight away.  

I had to laugh a little during Juan interview when he gave his first impressions of Bournemouth as a town. He noticed that in January it is cold on the south cost and was looking forward to the summer. I just though he might get a bit more of a shock when he visits Sunderland this weekend. He may feel it's not so bad training at Dean Court after all.

Eddie Howe certainly likes to have many wingers at the club and I guess Juan will have a big scrap himself just to get selected in the squad when players such as Max Gradel and Josh King are back fit. It is vital though that loan signings do contribute to the team I feel as unless they get minutes at the club it will make it harder for other loan signings to feel that they will get a chance when signing for AFCB. We have seen Joe Bennett and Christian Atsu, perhaps for no fault of their own, find it hard to make an impact on the pitch even if they trained and in Bennett's case was so often unused sub. 

I was watching Juan Iturbe on Saturday and wondering what was going through his head as we were coming up to 80 minutes or so when he was warming up with Shaun MacDonald. On this occasion he was not going to get the signal from the bench, but this Saturday could be different.
New AFCB Wallet up for grabs.
Score Prediction competition
Win yourself a new AFCB zipped wallet just by predicting the correct score line of the game between Sunderland v AFCB. Tweet your prediction to @PeterBell19 and follow.

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Transfer Watch
AFCB may be moving away from their interest in QPR's Matt Phillips with the Daily Mail now linking them with Motherwell winger Marvin Johnson.

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