AFC Bournemouth League One promotion: A decade on - part three

We have spoken with some of the players who played big roles in that League One campaign, and have a series of pieces to bring you, looking back at some of the key moments from the season.

After a storming run up the table, Cherries’ promotion charged suffered a wobble in February…

CHERRIES looked unstoppable.

When Eddie Howe arrived in October, the club were floundering near the League One relegation zone.

Fast forward to February and a 2-1 win away at Crewe Alexandra, courtesy of a late Brett Pitman winner, saw Cherries go top of the table.

That game came at the end of a five-match winning run, which had also seen the likes of Milton Keynes Dons and Portsmouth swept aside.

From 20 league games since his return, Howe had guided his side to 47 points, losing just once.

However, all the good work threatened to be unravelled as Cherries embarked on a five-match losing run.

Preston North End, Sheffield United, Coventry City, Leyton Orient and title rivals Doncaster Rovers all dispatched of Howe’s charges in succession, Cherries notching just two goals in that spell.

By the evening of March 9, Cherries had slipped all the way down to seventh, outside of the play-off places and seven points off an automatic promotion spot, having played a game more than many of their fellow promotion-chasers.

So, what went wrong?

A glance at the team line-ups showed the most obvious difference.

From the side playing regularly during December, when Cherries were still in the middle of a long unbeaten run, the starting XI had been unsettled.

Goalkeeper David James had left the club, having reached 19 appearances with a 20th understood to trigger an extension to his deal. Howe used the opportunity to trim the wage budget with Shwan Jalal and new recruit Ryan Allsop now battling it out between the sticks.

The now-famous back four had also been disrupted. A horror tackle from Ryan Lowe on Tommy Elphick ruled Cherries’ skipper out of action, while left-back Charlie Daniels was also sidelined throughout that five-game losing run with a foot injury.

Cherries turned to the loan market, two defenders lacking game-time drafted in from a higher level, in Southampton’s Danny Seaborne and Brighton full-back Marcos Painter, the latter a recommendation from former Seagulls teammate Elphick.

That string of losses began at Deepdale. Within 10 minutes of the second half, Howe had used all three of his substitutes and his side were already 2-0 down. That is how the game would stay.

One member of the back-line who was still intact, alongside Steve Cook, was Simon Francis.

A decade on, he had a confession to make.

Francis asked the Daily Echo: “Was Preston away from home?

“That’s when me and Harry (Arter) had the fight the night before in the hotel!

“We staged a fight in the hotel room, like a wrestling match. All the lads came in videoing it. We had theme music coming in.

“The social scene was that good for a number of years, we just thought we could do whatever and it didn’t matter.

“Harry got dragged just after half-time. His legs had gone because we’d been fighting the night before and he was absolutely knackered. I remember him looking at me as he was going off!

“And Marcos Painter, Tommy’s boy, who came in after he gave a good recommendation on him.”

Elphick jumped in: “He signed on the Friday and they travelled him up to Preston away from Brighton at 5.30pm on the Friday night and played him the next day. He hadn’t even trained with us.”

Francis continued: “Poor lad. That just goes to show, when you have that unit as a back four, as soon as you unsettle that and bring in players that aren’t necessarily on the same page or they have to come in and play one game away from home, it just makes things a little bit unstable.

“That’s why Ed was so big on trying to keep the same team, keep the continuity. As hard as that is for players on the bench, because when you upset that rhythm, as you saw, it really affected the results.

“But Eddie’s teams and the squad we had, being able to bounce back was always a big thing for us. Setbacks, you’re always going to have them. But to be able to come back from that and after the five games, we went on a good run again.”

Francis says Howe never found out about the wrestling match in the hotel room, to which Elphick quipped: “He will now!”

Francis added: “He won’t care now. Well, he probably will actually, he will ring someone up!”

Striker Brett Pitman had, by his standards, been enduring a quieter spell in front of goal.

His brace in the win at Crewe were his only goals in six games, which also coincided with the start of Cherries’ losing streak.

And he concurred losing some key players played a big role in the club dropping off top spot.

“At that time, we knew that we were one of the better teams, even though we somehow lost five in a row,” he said.

“I don't think anybody really saw that coming, to be honest.

“It may have coincided with Tommy being injured, if I remember rightly.

“He was a big part of what we were, on and off the pitch.

“I think he got a bad tackle at MK Dons and was out for a little bit. And Charlie might have been injured as well.

“So I think we'd had a couple of injuries which didn't help us at that time.

“It's strange how you can win five, then lose five and then win eight. It doesn't always work like that.

“It's a little bit odd, but I think we knew at the time we were a good team in that division.”

• Part one: Cherries 'all over the place' as Groves loses his job
• Part two: 'As soon as Ed came back, the whole place changed' - Howe return ignites season

As Pitman alluded to, Cherries did recover from their wobble, going on to win eight matches on the spin.

Elphick, having watched on from the sidelines following his injury, returned as skipper, having taken the armband from Miles Addison.

Asked how big a role he had to play as captain to push the team over the line when he did return to fitness, Elphick said: “With the way Ed worked at the time, the sum was always greater than the parts.

“But if you lose especially two of the parts out of such a pivotal bit of the team in the back four, it’s going to knock the whole system.

“You add Marcos Painter to that on loan, add another loan player in Dan Seaborne, it takes a little bit of time to adjust.

“But the team for me, I always speak about captaincy and that, it’s a little bit of a myth in itself, just because you wear an armband.

“We had nine, 10, 11 lads who could lead that team, as easy as it was to follow a manager that was so clear in his messages.

“Wearing that, to me, it makes no greater difference.

“You get the armband because of what you bring, as Franno did at a later date, and you just be yourself.

“When you’ve got a group of lads that are so together. Si has alluded to the social side of us. We were all in real similar stages of our career, all had knockbacks, the motivation was so clear and so easy to ignite.”

With nine games to go and sitting outside the top six, Cherries needed to regroup and go again.

Check back to our website tomorrow for the story of how they did exactly that in part four of League One promotion: A decade on, clinching promotion with a game to spare.