Saturday 28 May 2016

A poor end of the season but what's next for AFCB?

Even our beloved Eddie Howe is under pressure when his team suffers a run of defeats like it has at the end of this season. While Eddie himself finds defeat hard to deal with and to get over, he is aware that his side has not performed in the last eight games or so to his satisfaction and it has left a bit of a bad memory in what has been a great first season at the top level.
3 While there is a pre-season and new season just around the corner, it is now that Eddie and his coaches must find out why they had this poor run and how to stop it next time. We know that they faced the top teams one after another in April, but if the side had not had victories against Man Utd and Chelsea earlier in the season then they would have been relegated without those six points. In other words relegation was not far away and there is no guarantee that AFCB will be able to beat such top sides next season. 
What will we see at Dean Court next seasons - more home wins hopefully.
Although there will be funds for new players, I get the feeling that there will not be a rebuilding of the side from front to back. Instead it will be minor modifications and trying to get more out of the payers that have gained a bit more experience now. The side is fairly young and with new contracts for Adam Smith and Steve Cook, it is clear that Eddie Howe is not looking to dispense with many from the current squad who are on long contracts. I am not sure that he has much room for manoeuvre anyway as the salaries of the players are the most expensive outgoings and if the club was some £40m in the debt in the Championship we can expect that its first season in the Premier League was even bigger with the signings of Glenn Murray, Juan Iturbe, Benik Afobe, Artur Boruc, Max Gradel, Tyrone Mings, Josh King, Adam Federici, Sylvain Distin, Lewis Grabban and Rhoys Wiggins.

In other words, even with the lucrative Premier League deal of £120m or so, AFCB need to keep its house in order and if it has a debt that needs reducing it has to play the transfer market cleverer than it has in recent seasons. To recoup, it needs to sell players at good prices and that is not something we have seen of late. 


Check out our Euro 2016 tab to read - Arter and Rashford are fine on the big stage

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