Cherries leave a sour taste for Blues

Blues go down to Bournemouth. Andy Munro isn’t happy.

Well, the bottom three place long forecast by most Bluenoses has at last been attained. This is thanks to Aitor Karanka’s stubbornness in not changing what can only loosely be described as his tactics. The board are equally culpable in their paralysis as they desperately try to avoid being seen as having made yet another disastrous appointment.

All this is allied to the fact that not only is it no fun to watch the Blues any more, it is actually torture. For Karanka to try to exonerate himself from blame by putting our defeat down to individual mistakes is an absolute disgrace. Let’s face it, 90% of goals are caused by mistakes and it’s down to the manager to ensure his defence are sharp and on the ball so that these mistakes don’t occur.

The players might well be trying, in their one-paced way, but there is no urgency or sparkle and it is, of course, down to the manager to get his players fired up – something that is patently not happening.

Team captain (and I use that tag reluctantly) Harlee Dean is a shadow of the player he was last season and considering his form was pretty poor even then, it shows how low he has sunk. To bring our new centre forward signing on in the 89th minute was a toss up between showing desperation and being insulting and in fact one of the few plus points was Scott Hogan getting a brace before being substituted.

The bottom line is that the quality of players are there to get us to safety but the manager is out of his depth on what is fast becoming a footballing Titanic. The only consolation is that the spirit of the club is not a clueless manager or a secretive board but the loyal fans and we won’t desert them even if, as now seems likely, we sink down to League One.