For the most part of the 2023-24 Premier League season, Andoni Iraola‘s work in the Bournemouth chair was met with plenty of plaudits as he masterminded their best-ever top-flight points total, although a three-game losing run to end the campaign was a mark on his record.
The Cherries were only a few moments away from a fourth straight loss in the top flight at the City Ground, where Chris Wood‘s opener for Nottingham Forest would ostensibly prove decisive, until Antoine Semenyo popped up with an 86th-minute leveller.
However, the goalmouth action largely paled into insignificance due to the sickening ankle injury suffered by Forest midfielder Danilo, and Bournemouth now arrive back at the Vitality refreshed and rest for their opening Premier League home match of 2024-25.
From November 2023 onwards, Bournemouth only suffered three top-flight losses on their own patch – two of which came against Liverpool and Manchester City – although their last home game of 2023-24 also saw them go down 2-1 against bottom-half battlers Brentford.
Summer sadness often engulfs the Vitality Stadium too, as Bournemouth have now failed to win each of their last eight Premier League matches in August, only scoring three goals in that sequence while shipping a mammoth 23, a rate of almost three per game.
Newcastle also made the net ripple on just one occasion in their opening fixture of the campaign, but that solitary strike from Joelinton proved to be enough to send Southampton back to St Mary’s empty-handed, in what their fans probably felt was poetic justice.
Howe’s crop were fighting an uphill battle for over an hour due to Fabian Schar‘s red card, as the Swiss defender foolishly leaned his head into Saints attacker Ben Brereton Diaz, who saw an opportunity to get his opponent banished and succeeded with a dramatic fall.
However, Brereton Diaz and his teammates had no answer to the steadfast resilience of Newcastle’s 10 men, and the Magpies could now achieve a feat that they have not managed since the Kenny Dalglish days of 1997 – win their opening two games of a Premier League season.
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Shutting out Russell Martin‘s men at St James’ Park also saw Newcastle end a six-game sequence without a clean sheet in the top flight, but shut-outs may be a thing of fantasy at the Vitality; the Magpies’ 19 away games last term produced a staggering 76 goals in total.
Newcastle conceded two of those efforts in a 2-0 loss to Iraola’s side at the Vitality last November, and they have now gone four top-flight games without a win against the Cherries, last prevailing in this fixture when Howe was in the South Coast dugout in 2020.
