Marked for Thomas Mitchell
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Squad21 Oct 2041
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings21 Oct 2041
Age has not caught António Silva yet — 8.45
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.45 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad21 Oct 2041
Alex Scott in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Oct 2041
Words at Bournemouth training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Harry Gray is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The terraces21 Oct 2041
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Joseph Brown has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Match19 Oct 2041
Bournemouth settle it inside twenty minutes
3 goals before the ground had finished arriving. Middlesbrough spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
Player ratings21 Oct 2041
Joseph Brown was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.01. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
Player ratings21 Oct 2041
Harry Gray runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Aug 2041
A knee injury of the worst kind for Ignacy Kowalik
122 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Bournemouth lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Market12 Aug 2041
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Bournemouth, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad12 Aug 2041
Alex Scott in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Aug 2041
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Thomas Mitchell is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad12 Aug 2041
“The easiest signature of my career.” Stephen Bailey and Bournemouth agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad22 Jul 2041
Liam Richardson damages knee ligaments — 22 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 22 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad22 Jul 2041
Harry Gray in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Market22 Jul 2041
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Godwill Ambrose will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Bournemouth the goodbyes have quietly begun.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad15 Jul 2041
Liam Richardson damages knee ligaments — 29 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 29 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
Squad15 Jul 2041
Alex Scott in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Jul 2041
Thomas Mitchell is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Market19 Nov 2040
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Player ratings19 Nov 2040
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.36, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Squad19 Nov 2040
Harry Gray in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bournemouth this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match17 Nov 2040
It finished 2‑1, and it was Anton Palmer’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Bournemouth.
Squad19 Nov 2040
David Romero falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Match17 Nov 2040
Bournemouth make home a hard place to visit
8 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Player ratings19 Nov 2040
Successful dribbles: 18. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad19 Nov 2040
29 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
Squad19 Nov 2040
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces28 May 2040
The mood at Bournemouth has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Boardroom28 May 2040
The scrutiny sharpens at Bournemouth
Nobody upstairs has said anything, which is the loudest thing they could do. Results buy silence in this game; the account at Bournemouth is running low.
Squad28 May 2040
A fracture rules Steven Kelly out for 34 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Bournemouth will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad28 May 2040
Alex Scott was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Market28 May 2040
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bournemouth is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Boardroom28 May 2040
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Andrew White has agreed terms with Newcastle United for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Squad28 May 2040
Rayan gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad28 May 2040
Thomas Mitchell gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Thomas Mitchell has just signed for Bournemouth, and for once the answer mattered.
Boardroom28 May 2040
Burnley will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Billy Cullinane has pre-agreed a move to Bournemouth, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.