Thursday 3 November 2016

The woodwork has certainly robbed AFCB of some points

Eddie Howe and Jason Tindall might want to take a long hard look at the Premier League stats for hitting the woodwork. It's a table where AFCB comfortably top with 11 instances and the number is strangely high for a tam that gets forward but is often accused of not testing the keeper enough.
Not the woodwork again!
If the players start to think though that they are likely to hit the post or the bar and they can't get that out of their head, it is more than likely that they will keep seeing that as the outcome. It may even help the team just to hit a few shots into an empty net to feel comfortable in knowing that it is easier to find that space than to hit the frame of the goal.

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Afobe and King added two to the total of woodwork hits in the last match against Middlesbrough on another day when three shots on target were again really not enough to cause problems for the opposition. Looking at that stat for shots on target, Eddie Howe will be concerned that the side seemed to be improving in front of goal up to the Watford match and have slipped back to creating just a few strikes where the keeper has needed to make a save. The average is 3.2 shots on target per game, but that has been helped by the Hull City thumping. Take that match out of the equation and it's nearer to an average of 2.4 shots on target per game.



The Cherries would have upped that stat of hitting the target considerably to 4.3 a game if they had not been so magnetically drawn to the woodwork on so many occasions. The game where perhaps AFCB were unlucky not to get something from the match appears to be West Ham as the shots on target were above average for the team, although Harry Arter received two yellow cards in that game. It is interesting though that the Cherries picked up all three points against Everton and also picked up a point against Spurs when the shots on target fell well below average for the team - good defensive displays there, I think we can say.

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