Are Bournemouth Being Dragged Into A Relegation Battle?

That is a question that is being asked more and more and the season progresses , the current Premier League table would perhaps suggest not but the form that Bournemouth are currently in would answer that question in the affirmative.

Bournemouth currently find themselves in 14^th but the fact that they have not won any of their last seven league matches will be of concern to Eddie Howe and what will be more worrying is the fact that they have lost all of their last four league outings.

Add the fact that they have conceded 20 goals during that run of seven league games without a win and you can begin to see that the odds are beginning to stack up against The Cherries in their bid to maintain their Premier League status, so much so that many fans will now be betting on them to be relegated at the end of the season.

Defensive lapses have proved to be their undoing on too many occasions this season and it was none more obvious when Artur Boruc gifted West Brom what would turn out to be the winning goal at The Hawthorns on Saturday.

All too many times Bournemouth have had themselves to blame as countless goals have been gifted, these are things that you can almost get away with when you are in the top half of the table but not when you are nervously looking over your shoulder as they are now.

In simple terms if they did not make these mistakes with an alarming regularity then they would not be in the position they are now but the problem is once the rot sets in, it is very difficult to turn things around.

At this part of the season it is all about momentum. Which teams are on an upward trajectory and which are on a downward one. Swansea and Hull have rolled the dice with new managerial appointments and are now reaping the benefits.

While the likes of Leicester and Bournemouth slide down the table. In the case of the former it has cost their most succesful manager in the clubs history his job, such is the need to stay in this division that there is no such thing as loyalty anymore.

Now I’m not suggesting Eddie Howe is in danger of losing his job anytime soon but for someone who has been tipped as a future England manager or even the successor to Arsene Wenger at Arsenal this is the time in which he needs to show what he is all about.

Bournemouth have spent big and perhaps not in the right areas. The likes of Jordon Ibe for £15m at the start of the season are very much a luxury purchase and perhaps not one that a club like this should be putting as top priority.

Perhaps credit has to go to Howe for not just settling on a pragmatic approach and being safety first, he obviously wants to play attacking football which is easy on the eye but perhaps he needs to go against his ideals and go for a more safety first approach in a bid to halt the slide down the table.

The departure of Nathan Ake was obviously a big blow and it comes as no coincidence that their form has taken a turn for the worse since he was called back by his parent club Chelsea to make sure they have enough defensive cover of their own.

But perhaps it runs deeper than just the loss of Ake. Are we seeing the symptoms of ‘Second Season Syndrome’ finally starting to kick in, many felt in the first half of the season that Bournemouth would not succumb to this but the affliction that has got hold of so many teams in the past has now found it’s way to the South Coast.

As we enter the final third of the season and we now have a bottom bracket of seven teams all fighting to beat the drop and if Bournemouth cannot rediscover the winning mentality that has escaped them in 2017 then the decline could be one that sees them lose their top flight status.