Another test passed. Loads of changes, away from home, brutal weather conditions, pegged back to 1-1 and with qualification in the balance, this team found a way. They’ve been doing it all season. Different kinds of tests, the same results. Even the one they ‘failed’ was really a pass all things considered.
You only have to look around at other results to see what could have gone wrong here. United got spanked at home by Newcastle reserves. A team containing Paul Dummet for fucks sake. Arsenal made changes and got spanked at West Ham. If the attitude isn’t right and you’re not at full strength, it can easily go wrong.
Our line up wasn’t weak, but it was nowhere near our strongest, whereas Bournemouth only made a couple of changes and were virtually full strength. Throw in the brutal conditions in the second half that benefitted the home side and were a great leveller, and this was tricky. But we battled and got through to set up a home tie against West Ham. All good here, nothing to complain about.
Up until the weather worsened I thought we were playing some nice stuff. The opening half an hour of the game we were completely dominant and I’m sure I heard at half time that Bournemouth only had 17% possession. That’s mad. They were full strength and playing at home, and we had 83% possession!
We didn’t make enough of it and only had a one goal lead to show for it, but with better finishing the game would have been won before the bad weather came. You could noticeably see towards the end of the first half that the rain got heavier and the wind picked up. It was behind us at that point, but when it got bad in the second half it was in our faces and it was tough to get out.
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