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Preview Percy is back after a brief break away to stock up on anti-personnel mines in advance of the carol singing season. Here’s his look at Monday’s trip to Bournemouth. Lots of old folks’ homes down there. Just saying...

Next up its another Monday night out of London as we trek down to the south coast where we will be hosted by 'AFC' Bournemouth. Kick-off is at 8pm and, with the last train back being at 22:08 you’d best get those running shoes prepared. If you’re not going, Sky are the broadcaster for this one.




So Bournemouth then. After a tentative start to the season that saw them win just the once in their first five games – and that was a 3-2 win up at Everton – things settled down a bit. A statutory 3-1 home win over Southampton was followed by a slight blip at Leicester where they went down 1-0.

They then, rather hilariously, beat Arsenal 2-0 at home, the visitors showing that they aren’t really all that without refereeing assistance. They have won four, drawn one and lost two of their last seven. The last three of those being wins away at Wolves (4-2) home against Spurs (1-0) and, perhaps slightly fortuitously, away at Ipswich (2-1). All of that has left them in a healthy eighth place with 24 points from 15 games.

Daisy tells me that their transfer kitty was bolstered by the somewhat amusing £65m received for Dominic Solanke. £13m of that went on making permanent last season’s loan move for Turkish international striker Enes Unal who arrived in the winter window from Getafe. The permanent deal was said to be obligatory assuming certain unspecified conditions were met.

One assumes that those related to the number of appearances rather than goals scored, given that the striker has notched just the three times in the 28 league games he has played since February. Still his presence allows us to indulge in some schoolboy humour by reminding everyone that his wife is Belgian footballer Lisa Smellers.

Their next signing won’t be seen on Monday. Alex Paulson is a 22 year-old New Zealand ‘keeper who arrived from Wellington Phoenix, before being loaned immediately to Auckland FC, both sides plying their trade in the Aussie A-League.

I am reliably informed that Phoenix and Auckland are big rivals and that it would have been unlikely that Phoenix would have transferred the Kiwi international to Auckland direct. All becomes slightly clearer when one learns that Auckland FC are owned by an organisation called Black Knight Football and Entertainment, who, coincidentally, are the owners of AFC Bournemouth. Ahhhh.

Another absent signing will be Canadian-born striker Daniel Jebbison whose fee of £1.5m was treated as out-of-contract training compensation for Sheffield United. He was immediately shipped out on loan to Watford.

They elected to go for youth in bringing in Dutch-born Spanish central defender Dean Huijsen from Juventus for a fee of £12.8m. Huijsen had actually gained Dutch caps through the whole age group range from Under 16 to Under 19 level. However earlier this year he became a Spanish citizen having moved to Marbella as a kid.

Since then he has transferred his international allegiance to the Iberian peninsula and he has since gained caps at Spanish Under 21 level. Huijsen it was who netted Bournemouth’s winner against Spurs the other week, a match which saw the Spurs faithful calling for Postegoglu to not bother bringing Solanke back with them.

Julian Araujo came in from Barcelona for £8.5m. American by birth, he has over 20 caps for Mexico after a string of call ups by the Septics at various levels, including full, failed to provide more than a handful of appearances. He made over 100 appearances for LA Galaxy in the MSL before crossing the Atlantic to Barca.




That move was not without its problems. FIFA rejected the transfer when they received the paperwork 18 seconds late. One presumes they hunted high and low for the brown envelope that would have made the problem disappear and didn’t find it. The deal eventually went through when the Court Of Arbitration For Sport got involved and ruled that the deal was ok.

The biggest chunk of the Solanke money went on Brazilian striker Evanilsen, whose arrival from Porto set them back £40m. He has four goals in 14 league appearances this season. One of those goals was the winner in the 2-1 defeat of Man City at the start of their recent slump. He’s been a recent addition to the Brazilian national squad, making his debut in June, though he has yet to break his international duck.

The one loan signing they have came in the form of Chelsea ‘keeper Kepa, whose role is probably football’s best example of nominative determination since Wenger put pen to paper on a deal to manage Arsenal.

Enough of them and let’s move on to the wild and wacky world of Association Football. PGMOL finally dismissed rogue ref David Coote. Would that they were so quick to punish misconduct within the game itself. Still it’s a start I suppose.

A recent article within the perennially “worthier than thou” When Saturday Comes bemoaned the levels of abuse that referees get at all levels of the game. Now nobody’s arguing with the concept of abuse being a bad thing. However, the problem is that incidents of such abuse serve only to obscure the wider problems that PGMOL are facing at the moment.

Laudable attempts to deal with abuse have a habit of conflating abuse with justifiable criticism, something that, whether by accident or design, suits PGMOL’s agenda right down to the ground. With no criticism there can be no improvement and we have seen already where that leads.

And so to us. Well the concept of fireproof referees showed the failings of that as a concept up at Leicester where a perfectly good goal was ruled out by an official who had a nightmare of a game. I’m told that our XG stat was something off the scale.

Not that I particularly care for a statistic that seems to have been invented by Spurs’ Spurious Records Department, you know the lot that kept churning out stats about Harry Kane becoming the player to score the most goals in a month beginning with A or some such nonsense, distracting Spurs fans from their lack of trophies for a bit.

I couldn’t give a fig for whatever XG says. You don’t stick the ball in the net you don’t win games however much you demolish the opposition. Referees don’t help of course but frankly if you are relying on them to do their job properly you really haven’t been paying attention.

Which brings us on to Wolves. Now they were also put out by the refereeing on Monday night. Looking at the incidents that caused the problem they might have had a point with one of the key decisions made. The Emerson foul was clearly outside the area and the contact was, arguably caused by the striker’s leg connecting with Emerson rather than the other way round. So free-kick at worst.




The so-called foul by Mavropanos in the build up to the goal – nah. They’d have been fuming had a penalty been given for the numerous occasions that such challenges went the other end. The one they may have had a point on was the occasion where Mavropanos stood on the striker’s foot. The official excuse was that the contact wasn’t enough to cause the fall.

The striker’s delayed descent to the floor probably did him no favours, but there should have been few complaints had the penalty been awarded.

In truth the ref had a poor night – as they all seem to do. The inconsistencies were alarming. Docherty finally got a yellow for his fourth cautionable offence, a fact helpfully confirmed by the referee who pointed out the pitch locations of the other offences.

Docherty probably shouldn’t have been on the pitch to score their equaliser, and his lenient treatment contrasted with that of Emerson whose yellow for a highly innocuous challenge will now see him serving a one-match ban. Soler picked up a yellow for kicking the ball away which was the second time in the game that had happened. Only one instance got a yellow though.

Still we should all be grateful for the ref really getting the really important things right. Thank the Lord he sorted out that problem with the sleeves that Summerville was wearing, thus preventing the threat of the descent into anarchy that such matters clearly pose to the game. We should all be so grateful.

Of course the big shadow hanging over proceedings was the horrible-looking accident to Michail Antonio that happened on Saturday. The photos of the car looked terrifying though on reflection much of that damage may have been the result of the actions of the emergency services in extricating Micky from the wreckage.

Clearly it’s too early to be wondering about what the future holds for Micky. However, if the reports suggesting that the club may extend his contract for a further year are correct it will be one of the more honourable decisions made by our owners. Either way, we send our best wishes.

Micky will obviously be missing on Monday as will Emerson, whose enforced rest is entirely due to the wonderful refereeing we are treated to every week. Everyone else will be available for selection.

Well this is a difficult one to predict. If prime Bournemouth turn up they will be a tough nut to crack. On the other hand their win at Ipswich was less than convincing, and that sort of side should be eminently beatable. And of course we can be equally Jekyll and Hyde ourselves.

So I think I will go for a stalemate here. The £2 that I was going to put towards a copy of “The Laws Of The Game” to give to referees so they have more than one copy to share between them, which is clearly the case at present, will instead be wagered on a bet for the game to finish 1-1.

Enjoy the game!




When last we met at What I will call Dean Court until my dying days: Drew 1-1 (Premier League August 2023)

Opening game of the season and an away point. However, it was two points dropped rather than a point gained. We were cruising to what, at that point, would have been a comfortable and deserved win thanks to a beaut from Bowen. Then we stopped playing. We sat back with our feet up. The equaliser was a bit flukey – a mis-hit shot deflecting nicely into the path of Solanke – but frankly we asked for it.

Danger Man: Antoine Semenyo

Although Kluivert is top scorer his total of five includes penalties – including the recent hat-trick at Wolves.

Referee: Chris Kavanagh

Honestly I have zero confidence in any of them these days. Longer serving than most which probably means he thinks he can do what he likes.

Percy and Daisy’s Bournemouth Fact Of The Week Type Thing

According to the Office for National Statistics, something like 21% of Bournemouth’s population is over the age of 65. Rumours that our owners have suggested to the Local Authority that they double the Council Tax for that age group are of course very silly and made up. However, having said that, we do wonder where the inspiration for the Government’s scrapping of winter fuel payments for pensioners came from.

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