Eddie Howe knows his Cherries side will have to be at their best to secure a positive result against Manchester City on Saturday.

The weekend’s 12:30pm kick-off follows on from the 2-1 midweek win in the Carabao Cup at Birmingham City.

The Bournemouth manager spoke to the media in his press conference ahead of the game against City.

On the positivity from Tuesday night’s win…

Whenever you win a game you get a good feeling and that positivity you crave. No matter what competition it is it’s a good thing to do.

It was good to see us score, we’ve always been very free-flowing and have created chances and in the first two games we didn’t do that. To do so against Birmingham City was good to see.

The results at the start of the season are one thing but the performances have been more concerning. With the quality of the opposition on Saturday we’re going to need to raise that level to compete.

On the differing challenge of playing Manchester City…

It’s a totally different game, we’ve dominated possession but not created a great deal in the first two games. This will be different, we respect Man City as we’ve had some tough battles and we’ll need to be at our very best to get a result on Saturday.

They have been very good against us, using the ball well, countering well and defending well. When you add their way of doing things with the quality of the players they have it makes things very tough.

When we’ve reviewed the games we’ve had against them our last game here was the most effective and we were in the game for a long time. We have to take the positives from that game and try and build on them.

On the pressure to perform in the Premier League…

It gets tougher every year, the competition gets more intense and the players get better. This will be the hardest Premier League ever because it’s the most recent one.

With the money in the Premier League now the standard of the players coming in is always improving and that makes it ever-harder for each team to compete. It’s a challenge we always look forward to taking on.

On Jermain Defoe getting into the England squad as a Cherries player…

It’s great to see from our perspective as we’ve not seen that too many times. I’m delighted for Jermain, I know the World Cup is at the forefront of his mind so it’s really good for him.