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Right now, any win will do. Our first game of the season in a ‘normal’ matchday slot - a 3:00pm kick off on a Saturday. Rare as hen’s teeth, those. Unlikely we will have added any reinforcements to the squad, and entirely possible that yet another will be forced to drop out, so it’s another patched up squad that will take to the field against the Cherries and their Spitfire pilot. We usually get the better of this lot, but then we usually aren’t down to the bare bones when we face them. Anyway: Tenacity. Heart. Ruthlessness. Efficiency. Effervescence. Power. Organisation. Intelligence. Nerve. Tactical precision. Skill. I don’t ask for much. The match against Bournemouth in March 2020 was our last fixture before Covid put the world into lockdown. We won that one despite going a goal down (we were in the sort of form we are currently in, and a far cry from earlier in that season when it literally was win after win). The season before that, the teams met in this fixture in February 2019, and the Reds comfortably came out on top. Sadio got the opener when he sneaked in front of the defender and stooped to head a right wing cross into the back of the net. Gini doubled our lead with a very well-taken goal. We won the ball in the Bournemouth half down our left, Sadio and Robbo worked a bit of space, and Gini stole in unseen to get on the end of Robbo’s lofted pass and then lobbed Begovic (or was it Ramsdale, I’ve no idea) from 10 yards out on the angle. While the result was never in doubt as we had Bournemouth on the ropes, we made absolutely certain of the 3 points when Bobby was played into the right channel and back-heeled a pass into Mo’s run. Mo had made to provide an outlet for Bobby out wide and took the defender with him, only to cut inside just as Bobby reached the ball. The runner with him just didn’t anticipate it and Mo was able to stroke the ball into the bottom corner with ease. We were so on top we could have had another 2 or 3. Here is the action from that game. The big film on 19th February 2019 was the third instalment of the How to Train Your Dragon franchise, The Hidden World. Never seen it. Never seen any of them. Not arsed about them. Next. Perhaps the biggest news story of this day in 2019 was that Bernie Sanders announced that he would be running again for the Democratic Party’s Presidential nomination in 2020. As much sway as he has with younger people and the non-white demographic (people who want to change the status quo in the US and do away with old hat yee haa cash grab), he is primarily a leftie, and the US politics (and indeed everyday life) has had it indoctrinated since the Second World War that anything left of centre is dirty Pinko Commie behaviour. Leftist ideas can aid debate and they can encourage some thinking outside the box, but ultimately they are not a vote winner over there. I suppose it’s really not that much different this side of the pond, where Labour espousing traditional Labour ideals will not get enough votes to beat the Tories in a General Election. Labour’s only election winner since Harold Wilson was very much centre-left at best (some would say centre-right, and some would have Blair as being to the right of the Tories!) in a deliberate ploy to pull in more middle ground voters. Sanders would join a very diverse list of candidates that included eventual nominee and election winner Joe Biden, Kamala Harris (the next Vice President), Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg, but would fall short of the final showdown. As I said before, this game is a bit of an unknown quantity because we are lacking options due to our injury list, and we are out of form. We also concede first all the time now. That has to change, and has to change now. We do not need to absolutely blitz Bournemouth (thought that would be most welcome all the same), but we need to set our stall out that nothing but 3 points will do. Decimated or not, we still have the armoury. We need to show that we still have the right attitude and application, elements missing in recent weeks, and show it from the off. That’s all. Fucking go out there with our game faces on, and get the job done.