Could we fall right into Crystal Palace’s trap?

Three wins a row, five games unbeaten, and a growing sense that we can survive – the last few weeks have been a good time to be an AFC Bournemouth supporter (let’s just avoid talking about FFP for the time being though…).

Even with the growing positivity surrounding the club the next three fixtures in particular will prove a very stern test indeed to the strengthening unity and spirit amongst the squad however. Crystal Palace at home, and then Arsenal and Leicester City away.

Of these three it’s the Palace game which worries me the most, and for a few reasons. The first is that I see the matches at the Emirates and King Power Stadium as, effectively, free throws – fixtures we realistically on paper have only a small chance of getting anything from. So can just go for it, and with our attacking philosophy we will anyway.

We do have a real chance against Crystal Palace though, which makes the game a good chance to get a point or three on the board before our tricky away double header. But that perhaps underplays how difficult a game it will be.

After all, the Eagles aren’t doing too badly themselves and are only out of the Champions League places due to goal difference. If you’d said Palace would be in that position just over two years ago when Ian Holloway was in charge I certainly wouldn’t have believed it, but this has been a Premier League campaign of surprises so far - to say the very least.

But it’s the fact that their team is based around defending in numbers and counter attacking with pace which has me worried – two qualities that we’ve struggled to cope with under Eddie Howe’s time at the club. The way we set ourselves up, on paper, plays right into Palace’s hands - and it feels a little like we might be going up against a brick wall with water pistols.

We can’t change our attacking philosophy at this stage after all – whenever we’ve chosen to play defensively to counteract another team’s strengths it’s always backfired. See our defeat to Derby last season and our loss at Saint Mary’s in November as proof.

There’s no sign we’ll be changing any time soon either, with the recent strong rumours that the talented but inconsistent forward player Juan Iturbe will be signed on loan from AS Roma. So I just have to hope and pray that we score first on Saturday – as it could potentially get quite ugly if we don’t.

The fact that Palace have several injury doubts including Yannick Bolasie, Yohan Cabaye, Dwight Gayle, and Connor Wickham doesn’t help diffuse my anxiety for our Boxing Day showdown one jot either. We have several injury problems of our own after all, with Junior Stanislas and Josh King – both squad players who have done so well to force their way into the starting eleven - being two more to add to our increasing list of walking wounded.

What does give me hope is that - despite winning - Alan Pardew’s team weren’t hugely convincing against Stoke last week, so the odds are we will create chances if we bring the attacking sparkle we’ve shown in recent weeks into the match. Then there’s the man who will likely be at the end of those opportunities to take into account - Glenn Murray (if Josh King is out that is). Hopefully the former Eagles striker will be able to use his knowledge of his team mates to our advantage - and we can be on at least 20 points before we head into two tricky away fixtures.