Bournemouth still in thick of relegation battle warns Howe

REUTERS – Bournemouth cannot get carried away by three successive Premier League wins with just four points separating them from the relegation zone, manager Eddie Howe said.

A 2-1 victory at West Bromwich Albion on Saturday followed on from impressive victories over Chelsea and Manchester United to leave Howe’s men 14th in the standings.

“From my perspective, you can’t be. That means you’re going to be content, potentially sit back and think ‘great, job done’,” Howe told British media.

“We are still in the thick of it, we still have to pick up points and there is no relenting from our perspective. It is hard work and improving the players is key.”

Bournemouth had impressed the purists with their style in the early weeks of their first ever season alongside the elite of English football but their slide into the bottom three had raised doubts about their chances of survival.

Despite a rash of long-term injuries to a host of key players, including captain Tommy Elphick and leading scorer Callum Wilson, Bournemouth have found their stride with a five-game unbeaten run.

“There’s still a long way to go so we are not getting carried away with ourselves. Football has such a short term view these days and only a few weeks ago we were getting some bad publicity for certain things,” Howe said.

“Results had not gone our way but I felt the performances were good and now, I think we have got a little bit of reward for our hard work in that period where we didn’t change too much about our team.

“But we know to maintain it, we need to continue to improve, you can’t stand still in this league. We are pleased but we want more, that is the nature of the group we have, we are never happy.”

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; editing by Justin Palmer)