The Opposition – Bournemouth
The Cherries have found the step up to Premier League football tough. After winning the Championship last season, Eddie Howe’s team sit second from bottom on 9 points. Just the two league victories from 13 games isn’t a return that suggests Premier League survival is on the cards.
Perhaps their biggest problem is their lack of experienced Premier League players. Summer arrival and ex-blue Sylvain Distin is the only player with any sort of prolonged experience of the top flight, whilst a few others have had fleeting appearances. Distin, incidentally, is one of 3 ex-Evertonians in the Bournemouth ranks, along with Christian Atsu and Dan Gosling.
The Cherries broke their transfer record in the summer, spending £8m on Tyrone Mings from Ipswich.
Callum Wilson leads their scoring charts, with 5 goals in 6 games.
What the managers say
Roberto Martinez – “I don’t think I’m revealing a secret when I say Bournemouth were not one of the favourite teams to get promoted from the Championship – so when you see that enormous success, why would you change it?”
“I think their success over the years has been that clarity and understanding of how they want to play, and it has been a really successful story – there is no need to change anything. I think Bournemouth carry a winning mentality from what they achieved in the last two or three seasons.”
“To lose some of your most influential players is always going to have an effect. “But they are very clear in the way they want to play, based on what they do on the ball – they want to break teams down and bring on attacking play and score goals.
“At the moment they are in a run of negative results, but I think the way they perform is not like a team that has not got belief or confidence in what they are trying to do.
“They are a team that can click at any time and get a positive result, and we need to be very wary that it doesn’t happen at the weekend. I know we are going to be heavily tested and need to be at our best.”
Eddie Howe – “I’ve never envisaged managing a team against Everton, I would never have thought that was likely.
“I was an Everton fan when I lived in Watford, in the 80s Everton were a really successful team and the 1984 cup final sticks in my mind as a game I watched from a Watford perspective, then really enjoyed the way Everton played and ended up following them from then onwards.
“Everton was really important to my early memories and involvement in football, but moving down here, I ended up falling in love with Bournemouth.”
Team News
A late call will be made on Leighton Baines.
Tom Cleverley and Muhamed Besic are back in contention.
Steven Pienaar, Bryan Oviedo and Tony Hibbert are all still out.
Previous Meetings
Everton have only ever played against Bournemouth 3 times with the Blues winning all 3, with the last encounter in October 1985. Everton won 2-0.
Expected Starting XI – (4-2-3-1) – Howard; Coleman, Stones, Funes Mori, Galloway; Barry McCarthy; Deulofeu, Barkley, Kone, Lukaku.
