Full time: Bournemouth 0-2 Crystal Palace
Peep peep! Palace move up to ninth, above Arsenal, after a quietly emphatic victory at the Vitality Stadium. Luka Milivojevic and Jordan Ayew scored fone goals in the first 23 minutes, and after that Palace kept Bournemouth at arm’s length with their usual excellent defending. It was an immaculate away performance. Thanks for your company, goodnight!
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90+3 min No red card for Cook.
90+3 min Kouyate is down after wearing Lewis Cook’s elbow in the neck. VAR are looking at it.
90 min Six minutes of added time, it stays here.
89 min A Palace change. Jairo Riedewald on, James McCarthy off.
88 min Townsend wins a corner for Palace, who have managed the game perfectly in the second half. Bournemouth haven’t come close to scoring.
86 min Cook is booked for a lunge at Ayew.
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84 min Stanislas smacks it into the wall.
83 min Callum Wilson is fouled on the edge of the D by van Aanholt. Lerma and Stanislas are over it...
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82 min Lots of Bournemouth possession, but they still don’t look like getting behind Palace.
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78 min A loose ball comes to Stanislas on the right side of the area. He chops the ball away from McArthur and drives a left-footed shot well wide of the far post.
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76 min A Palace substitution: Andros Townsend replaces Christian Benteke.
73 min Van Aanholt’s angled free-kick is headed down by Benteke to Cahill, who lashes a volley over the bar from 15 yards. It was a very difficult chance, though he is an excellent finisher for a centre-back.
72 min Joel Ward is booked for a lunging tackle on someone or other.
72 min Bournemouth’s next game is away to Wolves on Wednesday. On the same evening, Crystal Palace go to Liverpool.
68 min Solanke shoots well wide from 20 yards. Bournemouth can’t lay a glove on Palace.
67 min Lewis Cook is booked for a foul on Ayew. I’m not sure it was a foul, in fact, but it was given.
66 min Ake is going to continue, though he doesn’t look great. I don’t know whether he has had a concussion test or not.
65 min A Palace substitution: James McCarthy for Luka Milivojevic, whose lovely free-kick gave them the lead.
65 min While Ake is being treated, the players take their drinks break a couple of minutes early.
63 min Ake’s header, from Stanislas’s outswinging corner, is comfortably saved by Guaita. Ake headed the back of Cahill’s head in his follow through and is receiving treatment. He looks okay, if a bit groggy.
61 min Another Bournemouth substitution. David Brooks, who did well on his return but is struggling with cramp, is replaced by Junior Stanislas.
58 min Palace are slowly draining the enthusiasm out of Bournemouth, as they did in the first half. A goal would change everything, but at the moment Palace are in control.
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56 min “I always remember Gerard Pique’s anecdote about Carles Puyol on concentration,” says Mike MacKenzie. “One game, Barca were 4-0 up in the second half. Something humorous occurred and Pique laughed out loud. Puyol shouted at him ‘Focus!!’ (in Catalan of course!).”
55 min “Hodgson is indeed an excellent defensive coach,” says Matt Dony. “Now, as a Liverpool fan, I’m never going to be overly enamoured with him, and as a Welshman, there are few things funnier than THAT Iceland game (although, in fairness, much of the humour came from Steve McClaren’s reaction), but he is often unfairly dismissed. His record is long and impressive, and few British coaches can touch his work abroad. I hope he sticks around in the league for a little while yet.”
He’s a superb coach of smaller teams. It sometimes feels like he’d finish in mid-table whether he was in charge of Barcelona or Accrington Stanley.
53 min Lewis Cook shoots wide from 25 yards. Bournemouth cannot get behind this terrific Palace defence, hence all the shots from long-range.
51 min Lerma’s long-range shot is blocked by Dann. Bournemouth have made a bright start to the second half.
49 min Dominic Solanke replaces Josh King.
48 min King is being helped off the field, putting very little weight on his left ankle. And there’s no red card for Cahill.
47 min Lerma puts the ball out of play so that Josh King can receive treatment. It was a full-blooded tackle from Cahill, who won the ball and then followed through into King’s ankle. VAR are checking for a possible red card, and I reckon Cahill will walk for this.
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46 min Peep peep! Bournemouth begin the second half.
Bournemouth have made a half-time change: Harry Wilson off, Arnaut Danjuma Groeneveld on.
Half-time listening
Half time: Bournemouth 0-2 Crystal Palace
Peep peep! Palace are on course for victory to thanks to excellent goals from Luka Milivojevic and Jordan Ayew. They have been immaculate in defence and ruthless in attack; Bournemouth haven’t.
45+2 min Adam Smith is booked for a foul on Zaha.
45 min Ayew is booked for a late tackle on Lerma.
44 min “Hey Rob,” says J.R. in Illinois. “You’re darn tootin’ Roy Hodgson is an outstanding defensive coach. Remember that time he resigned from the England job and was forced into a press conference and he said he couldn’t understand why he had to have a press conference? Boy was he ever defensive.”
41 min “‘Palace are finding it so easy…’,” says Gary Naylor. “Well, not really. Hodgson’s approach requires real concentration on the pitch and on the training ground and, though we always talk about a ‘lapse in concentration’ like it’s the default state, it isn’t. Sustained concentration, as anyone who has seen a student change over three years, is both difficult and a learned behaviour. I wonder if Uncle Roy has worked on this - it’s his kind of thing. If so, Mikel Arteta should give him a call.”
Yes, that’s a good point - and it applies equally to attacking teams. Sir Alex Ferguson always spoke about the importance of concentration, and you can really see it when you watch Liverpool and Manchester City.
39 min Palace are so comfortable, with and without the ball.
35 min Brooks beats van Aanholt with a neat bodyswerve but then misplaces a simple pass to Harry Wilson and waves his arm in frustration.
32 min Lerma’s snapshot from 20 yards goes well wide.
30 min Bournemouth continue to bang their head against the brick wall. I was wrong about Palace’s two banks of four; it’s one bank of four and another of five, and Bournemouth already look like they’ve had enough of trying to break them down. Roy Hodgson is an outstanding defensive coach.
27 min Josh King shoots from 30 yards, and finds Boscombe High Street.
25 min And with that, it’s time for a drinks break.
Any team in the Premier League would have been happy to score a goal like that. Zaha, on the left, teased Smith and then slid a beautiful pass between him and Harry Wilson to find the overlapping van Aanholt. He looked up and cut it back towards Ayew, who ran round the ball and steered a precise low shot past Ramsdale.
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GOAL! Bournemouth 0-2 Crystal Palace (Ayew 23)
What a fine goal from Crystal Palace!
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23 min That Milivojevic goal has deflated Bournemouth, who had made a jaunty start to the game. Palace have the game under control at the moment.
21 min A win today would move Palace above Arsenal, level with Spurs and only four points off Manchester United in fifth. I would love to see Palace in the Champions League. Let’s see how Bayern Munich and Barcelona deal with a Roy Hodgson defence.
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19 min Milivojevic shoots high over the bar from long range.
18 min “I get the sense that there’s been less VAR action in the games so far (including, obviously, one incident that was exactly the type that had people bleating for the magic of technology in the first place),” says Tom Hopkins. “Is that just me, or have the used the break to quietly bin it?”
They haven’t binned it – see the Spurs game – but they might have turned it down a notch.
17 min Callum Wilson flicks a header over the bar from Brooks’ inswinging cross. A half chance at best.
16 min Brooks plays a nice reverse pass to King, who does likewise to Callum Wilson in the area. His touch is poor and Cahill clears. Brooks looks very bright in the No10 role.
13 min Ramsdale did get a hand on Milivojevic’s free-kick, but he was at full stretch and in mid-air so I wouldn’t give him the full Roy Keane.
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GOAL! Bournemouth 0-1 Crystal Palace (Milivojevic 12)
He was interested all right! Luka Milivojevic has given Palace the lead with a classic free-kick. He curled it over the wall, through the hands of the stretching Ramsdale and in off the underside of the bar.
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11 min Zaha is fouled by Brooks, 22 yards from goal. The free-kick is to the left of centre, and Milivojevic looks interested.
11 min A half chance for Zaha, who flashes over from the left side of the box after good play by McArthur. “Ooooh!” scream the fake fans, about five seconds after the ball has cleared the bar.
9 min Nothing much to report. Plenty of good intentions from both sides, Bournemouth in particular, but they are not yet at their sharpest.
5 min Brooks, playing his first game of the season because of a bad ankle injury, beats van Aanholt on the right with a lovely piece of skill, a kind of Cruyff-turn chop. Bournemouth will be thrilled to have him back.
4 min A slow start, as has been the case in most of this week’s games. Palace’s defensive shape is as solid as ever though.
1 min After the players on both sides take a knee, Palace get the game under way. They are wearing their beautiful third kit; Bournemouth are in red and black stripes.
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Bournemouth have had some good news before kick off. West Ham, the team directly above them, have lost at home to Champions League-chasing Wolves.
Team news
Bournemouth (4-2-3-1) Ramsdale; Smith, Ake, Stacey, S Cook; Lerma, L Cook; H Wilson, Brooks, King; C Wilson.
Substitutes: Boruc, Rico, Kelly, Mepham, Gosling, Surman, Stanislas, Solanke, Groeneveld.
Crystal Palace (4-3-3) Guaita; Ward, Cahill, Dann, van Aanholt; McArthur, Milivojevic, Kouyate; Ayew, Benteke, Zaha.
Substitutes: Hennessey, Sakho, Tavares, Mitchell, Meyer, Townsend, McCarthy, Riedewald, Keutcha.
Referee Stuart Attwell.
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Pre-match reading
Preamble
The BBC has a rich tradition of Saturday night entertainment. Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game, The Two Ronnies, Noel’s House Party - and now it’s time for Roy Hodgson’s Two Banks of Four*! Yes, live top-flight football is back on the BBC for the first time since March 1988 (overseas readers, this is a very big deal over here, don’t ask me why), and they are starting with one of the games of the season: Bournemouth v Crystal Palace from the Vitality Stadium.
The defensive excellence of Roy Hodgson’s Palace means they are ensconced in mid-table, and could yet challenge for a European place next season. Bournemouth just want a Premier League place. They start the match in 18th, quite a collapse for a team that was seventh in November. But they were showing signs of improvement before lockdown, with seven points from their last three home games. If they can make it ten from four, they will start to feel the winter months were just a bad dream.
Kick off 7.45pm.
* Yes, I know technically Palace play 4-3-3 a lot of the time, but you know exactly what I mean.
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