AFC Bournemouth v Hull City

Looking For A Win In The First Home Game Of 2022

AFCB started 2022 in the Championship with a 3-2 away defeat at Luton Town and move down into second place in the table. It was a game that saw three first goals from players this season. The Luton Town first goal was an unlucky one as far as the Cherries were concerned, after Mark Travers had saved from Elijah Adebayo, the ball hit Lloyd Kelly’s foot and went into the net. Their second goal was scored by Allan Campbell for his first goal for his new club. In the second half Emiliano Marcondes headed in his first away goal for AFCB and Morgan Rogers equalised a bit later with his first goal for the Cherries. In the dying minutes of injury time, Kal Naismith snatched all three points for his club with his first goal this season. AFCB have the chance to start off their first home game of 2022 as they finished 2021 with a home win at Dean Court on Saturday at the normal time of 3pm against Hull City.

Since we met manager Grant McCann’s Hull City team in the draw in the away game in August last year, they have had a poor run of results home and away. Up until the 2nd October they hadn’t had a win until they beat Middlesbrough at home. This was then followed with five defeats and then four wins, two draws and three defeats.

Hull City’s most recent game was home against Blackburn Rovers and the Tigers with the added ingredient of playing in front of their new owner, who had acquired the club hours earlier, won 2-0, it was their first win in six games against an in form Rovers side who had been unbeaten for ten games.

In their away games since our draw at their ground, Hull City have W 2, D 2, L 7. They have lost their last two away games against Nottingham Forest and Blackpool. This season in their 13 away games, they have scored 9 goals and conceded 15. They are 19th in the table.

The last time we met Hull City was in the October of the 2016-17 season in the Premier League, AFCB won 6-1, the Cherries goals coming in the first half from Charlie Daniels, Steve Cook and Junior Stanislas from the penalty spot, with Ryan Mason scoring for the Tigers. In the second half Junior Stanislas scored his second goal of the game and further goals from Callum Wilson and Dan Gosling completed the scoring. The 11 that started that game for AFCB, only Adam Smith and Junior Stanislas remain as players, Simon Francis has an off field role at the club and of the 7 subs, they have also all departed Dean Court.

In our home games against Hull City, AFCB have W 9, D 5, L 7.
All games home and away, AFCB have W 13, D 12, L 19.

AFCB Team News
Probably too soon for Jordan Zemura and hopefully Philip Billing will be available after missing the game at Luton.

AFCB Player To Watch
We need Dominic Solanke back to his scoring form after being tightly marshalled at Luton. With Solanke in our side, he has scored in everyone of our 7 home wins. He has scored 11 of our 26 goals at home.

Hull City Team News
Players been missing through injury, Mallick Wilks, Callum Elder, Lewie Coyle and Alfie Jones.

Hull City Player To Watch
George Honeyman their influential midfield player, didn’t play in the earlier game in August through injury. Last season he scored 4 goals, with 13 assists, this season he has scored 5 goals and 1 assist so far. Another player is their 20-year-old attacking midfield player Keane Lewis-Potter, joint leading scorer with 5 goals and leads with 3 assists.

The Referee
Matt Donohue is the man in charge.
We had him last season away at Middlesbrough and home against Wycombe Wanderers where he gave a straight red card to a Wycombe player.
 
More on the team news.

Philip Billing and Ethan Laird both missed last week's trip to Luton Town and the head coach began his injury roll-call with an update on the pair.

"Philip Billing is back in and around the training group," said Parker.

"I'll have to make a late call on that one. He came back two days or so ago, but he's been in and out of things. I don't know exactly where we are with it, but will make a call with that.

"Ethan Laird, however, won't be in contention. I'm not sure he will be for the next game either as we're treading very carefully with him.

"He's on the grass and doing his work, so we'll build him up. We don't want to take risks as it's going to be an important back-end of the season.

"Other than that, everyone is pretty well and healthy. We're nursing knocks and bruises, but we expect that at this stage of the season.

"Aside from those I've mentioned and the long-term injuries, Junior Stanislas and Adam Smith, we're okay."

https://www.afcb.co.uk/news/first-team/team-news-updates-on-billing-laird-and-zemura/
 
Sounds like Billing will be on the benah to me unless Parker is playing mind games, which he has been known to do. If Billing isn'the starting, then can we have Pearson or Kilkenny playing deep, Jeff more advanced and Emi more advanced too?
 
AFCBade said:
If billing is doubtful then give him another week and let him recover. February begins the intensive game scheduling so we need him fit. Plus, Emi has scored two games in a row.
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Agree that one game won't make/break the season, but February might. That said, we need to figure out how to get more out of Dom if Phil isn't there.
 
I know it’s not going to happen in a million years, but at this point I really think that it would be beneficial to us to go back to basics and just play a 4-4-1-1 like we were last season under Woodgate. Billing as a number ten and if not fit put Marcondes in there instead. Right now we don’t really have the personnel to play with Parker’s preferred system, so why not just adapt the system to suit the personnel that we do have? Added defensive protection in the middle of the park, less defensive responsibility for Billing, and the full backs would also have more freedom to get forward. The way he is currently trying to play seems unnecessarily complicated and strikes me as giving players into a system rather than playing a system that suits the players.
 
Waz afcb said:
He’s just an Irish Stanislas. Spent large portions of his career missing numerous games a season due to repetitive niggling injuries. A very risky signing considering we already have Junior in the squad.
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Yeah, I guess sometimes you roll the dice, knowing risks involved, but hope for the best if better options not available.
 
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