AFC Bournemouth
Joshua King is a doubt for Saturday’s Premier League game with Burnley, after limping out of his return to the first team at Stamford Bridge.
The striker missed almost a month ahead of the trip to Chelsea, playing 75 minutes in the 1-0 win be-fore leaving the field early with an ankle injury.
In his pre-match press conference Eddie Howe gave an update on the Norwegian and the rest of the long list of injuries in his squad.
“We have concerns on a few players and we’ll make some very late calls on them,” he explained.
“Joshua King went off last week with a twisted ankle so we’ll see how he is, Andrew Surman picked up a calf problem from the game, so we’ll see how he is.
“Have we got any returns for the game from previous weeks? No, I don’t think so, we’re pretty much as we were. We’re stretched at the moment, that’s been well documented, but we’re still hopeful that a lot of the players with the longer-term injuries are making good progress, but they’re not going to be ready short term.”
With last week’s win against Chelsea a stand-out positive in what’s been a difficult recent run for the Cherries, Howe spoke of the difference in mood the squad and the importance of pushing that for-wards into the weekend.
“When you win you naturally get a bounce, the players feel better about themselves, and it’s the same for the supporters who will have had a lift,” he said.
“It’s key now that we push that on and get a good result against Burnley. They’re a team that work incredibly hard, they’re a very effective team and we’re going to have make sure that we’re good.
“We’ll need all the qualities that we showed against Chelsea, to show them again against Burnley.”
