BOSS Eddie Howe guided Cherries to a fourth successive victory and then praised his players for producing “one of our best performances of the season”.

Howe was delighted by his team’s efforts following yesterday’s comfortable 1-0 success at Colchester United.

Leading scorer Brett Pitman continued his fine form by netting the winner on 19 minutes to propel Cherries back into the automatic promotion places.

Howe said: “If a 1-0 can be comfortable, it was. We had to hang on a little bit at the end when they bombarded our box with set-plays. But I don’t think our goalkeeper really had a shot to save.

“I actually thought it was one of our best performances of the season. We dominated possession on a difficult surface and created numerous chances.

“We probably weren’t clinical enough with them but that was probably the only criticism of the day. I thought the performance, on the whole, was very good, and I feel we are developing as a team all the time.

“This isn’t an easy place to come and Colchester have got some good players but we looked by far the most dominant side.”

Lewis Grabban, Marc Pugh and Harry Arter all came close to extending the advantage but Cherries were not left to rue missed opportunities as a defence led by fit-again captain Tommy Elphick helped complete a hat-trick of 1-0 away wins.

Reflecting on that run, Howe added: “The back four have been very good, our goalkeeper has been good and they have been well protected. We are going to need to keep clean sheets to be a successful team. We have ground out some 1-0 victories on the road and that is a great scoreline.”