OPPOSITION VIEW: BOURNEMOUTH

Sunderland look to get back to winning ways against Bournemouth, who are unbeaten in seven Premier League matches. We spoke to the guys from Simply AFCB to discuss their great form and how the rest of the season might go...

8th in the league and on 38 points after 27 games, how do you rate your season so far and do you think you'll be able to qualify for one of the European tournaments?

Its been a rollercoaster season if I’m honest, plenty of ups and downs during an eventful season. I’d hope we’d be looking onto qualifying; I think that has been the goal since the start of this season and I think we’re more or less on track to be looking to that goal at this stage despite a few bumps.

We’ve done very well to cope with a lot of setbacks, losing players before the season had started and in January, I think at this stage of the season we’ve finally solidified our defence, and a lot of our new signings are having a lot more effect during games.

For that I think we’ve had a good season, could be better as our standards are high with our quality of squad in mind, but we could be also doing a lot worse.

How are you feeling about manager Andoni Iraola?

Its been good to see Andoni apply a lot more to the team in terms of tactical play recently, which has been one of the factors to why we’ve had a lot of good results. He’s a brilliant manager who is definitely onto better things and I won’t be surprised seeing him leave at any point as early as the summer. Still a young manager, but a true professional.

How did you fare in the January transfer window?

We did well to strengthen a few positions and bring more young talent in, the signings of Mandas in goal and Alex Toth are great signings for me, Mandas providing good competition for Petrovic who has performed much better since his introduction, and Toth as a bright Hungarian talent, looking forward to seeing more of him.

Most importantly, Rayan was the replacement for the outgoing Semenyo. It was no shock when Semenyo left as he’d been linked away for a while. An absolute star, Rayan has all the abilities to become an amazing player, with the physical capabilities of the Premier League, and especially end product as we’ve already seen from him. Brilliant window considering we lost our best player!

Unbeaten in seven games, what's caused this good run of form?

It has been a mixture of a lot of players getting their form back on or getting used to the style of play, such as Adli, Jimenez being a standout and new signings like Rayan who has boosted us by a lot and we look unaffected in the most part by Semenyo’s departure.

It would also be Andoni’s new style of play, particularly in away games where we don’t play to statistically look like the better team or play good football when we don’t need to, to win the game. Potentially one of our errors against Sunderland earlier in the season, we’ve become more adaptable and that’s helped us by a large margin.

Who's been your standout player this season?

For me, would need to be Alex Jimenez, a bit of a surprise package, a bit like Huijsen was, coming to AFCB’s side last season, but Alex has truly delivered. Amazing at going forward and overlapping with the winger, seems to work with Rayan very well, and has very much stepped up in defence, improving so much as the season has gone on, he’s been triumphant in some of our key results in the last eight games.

Which of our players are you most wary of?

Granit Xhaka, absolute player. I was hoping he still wouldn’t be available for Sunderland but in fact he might start. He controls the game so well that he might be the key to Sunderland getting that result, he is that leading figure as well that leads the mentality of the team. If he isn’t on the pitch then that is exactly what we could take that advantage of and get control early on, but with Xhaka playing, it’ll make it very difficult!

Last time out we beat you 3-2, coming from two goals down, do you think you'll be able to get some revenge this time?

I think we will be looking to, for sure. It was heartbreaking to see us go 0-2 up in such surprising fashion, being the only side to have potentially beaten Sunderland at the SoL, which was hard to take, so I think we’ll want to. We’re lucky to be playing Sunderland at a good time for us in recent form and a poorer time for Sunderland. Although Sunderland have so much quality and surprise, it’s going to be a tough game to say the least. Hoping for a 2-1 AFCB win, fingers crossed for us!

Where do you think Sunderland will finish?

I think that however Sunderland finish the season now, it’ll be a good one for them and they can start focusing on bringing new bright talents and new players for next season, which I think they’ll be able to do very soon with the way they have been and the position they are in. For me, I think Sunderland will finish 12th, which I think is absolutely incredible for their return back to the Premier League and they’ve got so much potential across the line.

It's not easy when a lot of new signings need to be made and are expected to gel quickly, and safe to say Sunderland have exceeded that expectation, by having a young squad of brilliant fresh signings. So however it ends, which I think will be midtable, will be impressive.