Alex Smith, Bournemouth Echo: How injury crisis galvanised Cherries | OneFootball

An injury crisis could have derailed Bournemouth's season but has instead had the opposite effect, explains Alex Smith, sports journalist at Bournemouth Echo.

The Cherries remain in the hunt for European football ahead of Saturday evening's Premier League clash against Brentford at Vitality Stadium (5.30pm kick-off GMT).

Bournemouth are ninth in the Premier League, only five points behind Chelsea in fourth. What have you made of their season to date?

Well, it has been a pretty good few months for Bournemouth. There was the record 11-game unbeaten run in the league and they have gone from strength to strength.

There were concerns that an injury crisis might derail the season, but if anything it seems to have had the opposite effect.

The squad has really rallied around the playing group and they have continued to pick up good results, epitomised by those wins over Newcastle away, when they won 4-1, and then Nottingham Forest at home, when they won 5-0.

Those wins really showed the togetherness and the spirit of the team, while also showing just how good they are.

There have been a couple of less impressive results recently, but they are still very much in and around that group just ahead of Brentford in the table and doing well.

They have won one of their last five Premier League games. Would you say the international break has come at good time?

Potentially, yes. One thing that I have heard people say is that could players actually coming back to bolster the squad from injury perhaps disrupt that settled group that was playing almost 90 minutes every week?

Andoni Iraola is probably is wary of that and is managing it really well.

It will be quite good to get more players back and to have a larger squad available after the international break, as well as giving those who have been playing a lot recently a bit of a rest and allowing those who have just come back to get some good training under their belts before the final run-in towards the end of the season.

Barring a horrific downturn in the last 10 games, Bournemouth will set another record points total this season. While that’s impressive in itself, do you think European qualification will be in the back of their minds, even though Iraola doesn’t seem the type to outwardly suggest that?

On the first part of the question, I agree something pretty drastic would have to happen if they were not going to beat the points total from last season (48 points).

But I think the mentality genuinely is: ‘We don't talk about Europe because we haven't achieved anything yet’.

Iraola stresses that in the press and, from chatting to other people within the club, it does not sound like he talks about it at all internally, either.

From the management side of things, it is not one of those things he says to the press and then it is different behind closed doors; it absolutely is, from him, that they do not look at the league table and they just go game-by-game.

Some players probably will be looking at it more than Iraola is, but I think that mentality from the manager will really help ground them and hopefully it means they will not get ahead of themselves.

If it gets to four or five games out and there is a realistic chance, then maybe he will speak about it and maybe use that as a bit of motivation. But until that point, it is not being spoken about, within the player group at least.

Which player should Brentford fans be keeping an eye on on Saturday?

Justin Kluivert is the leading goalscorer for the club and he has been brilliant, particularly stepping up when Evanilson and Enes Ünal were injured, but Evanilson is now back.

He looked really, really bright against Wolves in the FA Cup and I think he will be a threat. He scored against Brentford in the reverse fixture; in typical Evanilson fashion - he really reads the game really well - he intercepted a poor back pass and then finished.

Illia Zabarnyi will be back from suspension, too. He has been a key part of the Cherries' squad this season and he was missed for the first two games that he was out.

Tyler Adams has also been going under the radar, along with Ryan Christie. They have been a pair of absolute workhorses in the midfield and have been brilliant so far this season, doing a lot of the dirty work really, really well.

What should Thomas Frank’s side expect in terms of shape and style?

Iraola tends to opt for a 4-2-3-1 formation, with those two holding midfielders I mentioned.

It is quite a fluid system as well, with players dropping in and dropping out of position and three forwards in behind the lone striker, so players’ starting positions might not be the positions they play for the whole game.

For example, Antoine Semenyo; he has played out on the left, played out on the right, sometimes drops in through the middle. It can be tweaked during games.

It is the same with Kluivert and players like that. It is a very high-pressing style; they will press from the front, they will try and win the ball high up the pitch and try and create goals from that, hitting the opposition when they are perhaps not expecting it or are not as organised as they should be.

It is high energy, they always try and get a lot of shots off and they hope that they can score a decent proportion of those chances. I am sure it will not be a dull game.

Brentford edged the last game, with a 3-2 win in November. What’s your score prediction?

I am going to go for 3-1 to Bournemouth. I was going to say 3-2 and do a mirror of the last game, but I'll go for 3-1, why not?!