Eddie Howe was all smiles in his post-match press conference on Tuesday night after his AFC Bournemouth side defeated the current Premier League champions Leicester City 1-0 at The Vitality Stadium.
Eighth place “an amazing achievement”
This victory took the Cherries points tally to 21 so far for the season after 16 games, seeing them climb up to 8th in the table, the highest the club has ever been in the Premier League table. When reflecting on this feet, Howe believed that to say it was a great achievement is an understatement.
“It’s a nice thing to say, we’re building nicely, I think there’s still a lot more to come”, Howe said. “The club has come so far so quickly and it’s nice just to take a step back and really enjoy the position that we’re in at the moment, not that I would do so myself of course, we need to look forward”, he added.
Post-match thoughts
The AFC Bournemouth manager was particularly impressed with his sides defensive work as they kept a clean sheet against a Leicester side who put four past Manchester City just three days earlier. Howe said: “I think you have to give our players credit for the way we fought and battled in the game. They did counter attack well at times, but I think for the majority of the first half especially we frustrated them with our quality of play on the ball.”
Late on in the second half the Foxes made one final push to find the equaliser and came mightily close as a goal mouth scramble forced Artur Boruc into an excellent save to deny substitute Shinji Okazaki before the Japanese striker’s follow up goal bound strike was superbly blocked by Steve Cook.
It was a great save from Artur at a really big moment in the game, Cook’s tackle on Okazaki was also a critical moment and our defending was a lot better today”, said the Cherries manager. Howe was also full of praise for loanee midfielder Jack Wilshere, “Jack played in a deeper role today and I thought he was magnificent again for us, I felt he really influenced the play and that it was his best game for us so far”, he said.
Injury updates on Fraser and Wilson
Midfielder Ryan Fraser has really caught the eye in the Bournemouth side in the last couple of games, producing a man of the match performance off of the bench against Liverpool, which subsequently earned him his first Premier League start against Burnley on Saturday, but he did not feature against the champions. Howe said, “Ryan rolled his ankle in the Burnley game and it swelled up. It’s nothing serious but it wasn’t good enough for him to play tonight.”
The Cherries will look to make it back to back wins in the league for the first time this season when they face Southampton at home in the local derby on Sunday and Howe has assured that his players will be ready to give it their all to try and get the win in this big game.