Bournemouth Fan View: Dan Gosling must be dropped

There are some big unsolved mysteries in the world. Where did MH370 plane disappear to? Who exactly leaked those naughty celebrity pics back in 2014? And why does Dan Gosling keep starting for my AFC Bournemouth side?

Although Simon Francis was arguably to blame for Christian Eriksen scoring Tottenham’s winner against us this weekend – due to a half-hearted tackle – Dan Gosling completely failed to track the Spurs midfielder’s run through the middle in the first place. He just stood and watched the Dane stroll into our box.

READ MORE: Tottenham V Bournemouth Match Report

READ MORE: How Tottenham v Bournemouth unfolded

Considering how our tactics on Saturday revolved around clogging up the midfield, that simply shouldn’t have happened. Seeing as Dan Gosling can’t pick out a forward pass or control the ball in tight areas, I struggle to see why he’s starting for us week in week out, either.

He’s a reliable squad player, but that’s all he is. His place is on the bench, not the starting eleven. Every time he’s on the ball I expect us to lose it.

Harry Arter > Dan Gosling

It’s not as if we don’t have a better option available either. Although Harry Arter has been incredibly off-colour for us so far this season, he’s still a better player than Gosling.

To go a bit Top Trumps for a second, an out-of-form Arter is arguably better than an in-form Gosling. And Gosling isn’t even in form at the moment.

Arter would have arguably been on a high after his exploits with the Republic of Ireland national side earlier this week, too. It made no sense to have him on the bench.

Eddie Howe needs to start playing our best players in the first eleven before we get even further into trouble. That said, Eddie did still get a lot right on Saturday.

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Tactics against the bigger sides has changed

As I just alluded , there were positives from the game this weekend. The primary one is that Eddie Howe seems to have finally realised that we can’t attack the bigger sides in the Premier League and get away with it.

Aside from our limp 3-0 defeat at Arsenal, the two other fixtures against top-tier sides this season – Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur – have resulted in very narrow defeats.

This is largely down to us wisely playing a more defensive game against them, in comparison to the expansive style that’s almost always seen us ripped to shreds. Howe admitted post-match that he “tweaked the system to stop them (Spurs) getting the ball into Harry Kane.”

Personally that’s something I’m delighted to read, and I’m sure that we can eventually grab some points from the bigger sides in the coming months because of this less naive approach.

We were close to grabbing a hugely creditable draw on Saturday after all. Just one thing was holding us back…

We fail to take our chances

In my view, we gave Spurs more problems than Burnley or Swansea City did in their trips to North London. But whereas they left with draws, we’ve ended up empty handed.

The reason for this was a real lack of killer instinct in front of goal, with Junior Stanislas and Jermain Defoe missing very presentable chances.

We are at least creating chances – compared to earlier this season where we weren’t at all – but we need to start putting them away. Otherwise we could end up getting even deeper in trouble.