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First Team

Howe - We have to get back to our fundamentals

Eddie Howe aims to get his side playing the way his side have become well known for in Friday's Premier League match.

Brighton & Hove Albion are the opponents on Friday evening, with the Cherries boss speaking to the media in his pre-match press conference.

On changing his side’s form around…

We do it by going back to basics and getting the fundamentals of our game functioning. Historically we’ve always been very good on the ball and we haven’t quite seen that. We need to get that back into our game very quickly.

I wouldn’t question the attitude, I would question the performances, but when you work with a group every day you see trends and the attitudes and the players haven’t lost that at all, we just haven’t delivered on game day which is frustrating for them and frustrating for me.

We have to put that right.

On coping during lean runs of form…

Last season we had a difficult period and came through it and came back stronger. You do have times when you’re tested and you have to come back from that, and we’ve always done that before.

You just have to analyse how you work, you have to analyse yourself first and it’s been the case of doing that this week, as it is every week. We haven’t changed the way we work but we have to work better.

On Brighton’s rise to the Premier League…

It is remarkable, even in their wildest dreams I don’t think anyone could have predicted what would have happened at the two clubs. For them now to be in a lovely stadium, in a brilliant training complex and in the Premier League is a huge to what they’ve done, it’s been an amazing story for both clubs.

There are definitely parallels between the two clubs, there were issues always going on off the field. When you see the job that Chris has done from struggling in the Championship to promotion to the Premier League, he’s done an incredible job.

On the role of raising confidence with his squad…

Confidence is a factor any time you’re not winning and it becomes the stand-out thing that you need to give the players when they enter the pitch. The players need that feel-good factor again, but we’re in charge of that and it’s in our hands.

There’s certainly not an ability issue and I don’t see a huge confidence issue. I don’t see the players down and I think one result would see things change very quickly.