After another seemingly endless international break, we’re back to the Premier League this weekend with Huddersfield Town travelling to Bournemouth. The victory against West Brom in Town’s last outing leave them in a strong position in the league and have little pressure on them.
Bournemouth beat Newcastle away from home in their last match to pull them out of the relegation zone. That result helps them, but it’s been an unimpressive start to the season for the Cherries. They’ll no doubt target a home tie against Huddersfield as a chance to pick up three points.
Bournemouth v Huddersfield Town – Match details
Kick off – Saturday 18 November 2017 at the Vitality Stadium
Tickets – The rules on away tickets mean Bournemouth only have to offer 10% of their stadium capacity to away fans so the 1,200 or so tickets were quickly snapped up.
Referee: Lee Probert – His last game involving Town was our limp exit from the league cup away at Crystal Palace. Prior to that, he officiated the Championship game against Preston North End, which Town won in injury time thanks to a Collin Quaner goal. The goal only happened because Probert generously gave us a penalty for an off-the-ball incident, which Mooy missed but Quaner cooly converted the loose ball.
Predicted lineup
Christopher Schindler misses out due to suspension and Aaron Mooy is expected to be rested after his helping Australia to World Cup 2018 qualification on Wednesday morning. If Mooy features at all it’ll be from the bench, and probably because things aren’t going our way.
Mounié played for Benin in the break and his fitness is supposedly getting closer to the level required by David Wagner. The difficulty for him is that Depoitre continues to do well up front, so will more than likely keep the shirt.
Kasey Palmer played 45 minutes for the under-23s in the week but I doubt that will be enough for him to get back into the starting lineup. He might be able to get a spot on the bench though.
Hefele and Stankovic are both still out injured so the only recognised centre back in the squad to partner Zanka is Cranie. I’d expect him to start, but Dean Whitehead, Danny Williams, or Tommy Smith could all do a job if called upon.
Wagner brought in Malone and Hadergjonaj to add more attacking intent to the fullback position against West Brom. I predict he’ll return to Smith and Löwe for Bournemouth, to firm things up at the back. Given both Flo and Malone have done interviews in the build up to the game I have a feeling I’ve got this prediction wrong, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Pre-match comments
The pre-match press conference was dominated by talk of Schindler and Mooy’s availability. Wagner wouldn’t rule out Mooy playing a part on Saturday but it’s hard to imagine that he’ll risk him. Maybe as an emergency option on the bench.
In better news, Wagner confirmed that Kasey Palmer is in full training but he’s not likely to start until he’s played in the under-23s a bit more.
Can Town turn around their away form
The 3-0 win at Crystal Palace on the opening day of the season was a great day, but the nights are dark and the temperature’s dropped and we’ve not won on the road since that day in August. Bournemouth certainly aren’t an easy opponent, but Town shouldn’t fear them and if we play well we can register another away victory and turn around this poor run of results.
Regular blog commenter Chris Green has grave concerns about Town’s points return on the road, but I think we’re doing OK.
Looking at our away performances rather than results shows that things aren’t too bad. Crystal Palace and Burnley were good performances and we came away with points. Liverpool saw us go with a specific game plan to try and frustrate, which worked for 45 minutes but we lost our way when Liverpool’s better players started to perform.
West Ham and Swansea are the only two away performances were Town underperformed. Even then, there was an element of bad luck in the goals conceded in both of those games, suggesting there’ll be other times we play poorly but snatch points.
In summary: I’m not worried about our away form, particularly with us having such good results at home.
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Opposition info: Bournemouth
I like the way Bournemouth and their manager Eddie Howe do things. They’re an exciting team to watch and try to play football the right way. Huddersfield Town draw a lot of comparisons with Burnley but I think we should be looking to emulate what Bournemouth are doing, though obviously still keeping to our own identity.
At home they’ll look to dominate possession, pass the ball around on the deck and look to pull Town’s defence out of shape by switching play around.
I see David Wagner as having two options to try to nullify Bournemouth’s key strengths:
- Let Bournemouth have the ball as much as they want until they enter the final third and then press aggressively to force them to have the ball out wide and to play it back to their defence. This limited kind of press worked well against Manchester United and in the first half against Liverpool.
- Play a more aggressive counter-pressing game and try to unsettle Bournemouth’s rhythm. This should give Town more of the ball, and mean we’re more of a threat going forward, but it also could leave us exposed at the back.
Man to watch: Josh King
Capable of playing as a striker, but has more often played a deeper lying play-maker role as a number 10. He’s a player that likes to get on the ball and run at defences, so Town will have to watch for him picking up possession in deeper areas and charging forward.
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Bournemouth v Town history
Town have played Bournemouth 49 times, beating them 16 times, losing 13, and drawing 16. That’s a disproportionate number of draws, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another one at the weekend.
The first meeting of the two clubs came relatively recently, in 1973 in a 1-1 draw in the old Division Three. The most recent meeting was another 1-1 draw in February of 2015, with James Vaughan scoring the equaliser for Town. Even though it’s only two and a half years ago, Hogg and Smith and the only Town players from that match-day squad likely to play at the weekend.
Terrier Spirit prediction: 0-0 draw
We’re missing arguably our two best players in Mooy and Schindler, so the depth of the squad will be put to the test. While Bournemouth aren’t as fearsome a proposition as the top six teams, they’re a team that can play good football and will be keen to pick up points in front of their fans.
I think it’s possible that Town could get something out of this game. The win against West Brom while down to ten men felt like a significant one, giving the team some momentum and belief back after a tough defeat at Anfield. If we seep that spirit in the team then I think we can beat any team in this league (perhaps not Manchester City).
It wouldn’t surprise me to see David Wagner set his team up to play a more compact system against Bournemouth, so we might not see much expansive football and there may be more of Lössl lumping it downfield for Depoitre to chase on his own. I trust Wagner and his team to have got their analysis right and to have found a way to get something from this game, even if the way we do it isn’t pretty.