AFC Bournemouth v Tottenham Hotspur Betting Tips

This weekend’s opening Premier League fixture looks like a tantalising prospect as two teams who are famous for open and expansive football go head-to-head on the south coast.

Despite a pretty poor start to the season, Bournemouth have finally found a bit of form and have gone three matches unbeaten, leaving them a very comfortable eleventh in the table. They rounded off the last of that trio of matches by beating newly-promoted Hull City by a convincing 6-1 scoreline.

Eddie Howe’s team have an excellent home record having won their last three matches at the Vitality Stadium by an aggregate score of 8-1. Impressive.

Other than their demolishing of Hull City, the Cherries managed to beat a tough West Bromwich Albion side as well as high-flying Everton. Although Bournemouth are known for the expansive style of play which leaves them pretty open at the back, it is worth noting that those two afore-mentioned wins against established Premier League teams were simple 1-0 victories. This shows that Bournemouth are more than capable of grinding out results when they need to – not doing this was a weakness of theirs last season.

Tottenham are still the only undefeated side in the Premier League after eight matches, but, they have stumbled a bit since the international break. Firstly they could only draw 1-1 away at West Brom (even that was a late equaliser) whilst they also struggled to break down German team Bayer Leverkusen during Wednesday’s Champions League match.

Spurs were rightly credited with finding a potential formula to stopping the previously unstoppable Manchester City before the international break. However, it now seems this finding of a formula has gone against them. In the previous two matches (both away), West Brom and Leverkusen sat tight and simply gave Tottenham no room to play with. Clearly the way to play against the north Londoners is to sit deep and block off the spaces before countering.

Having said that, I am not sure their opponents this weekend – Bournemouth – are capable of putting in a really solid defensive performance against one of the best attacking sides in the league. It simply goes against manager Eddie Howe’s nature to not try and attack the opposition.

With this in mind, I would look at backing the Tottenham win here as it’s hard to see them not catching this Bournemouth side out.

As mentioned in the introduction, these sides are famed for their fluid football and we will hopefully see that come to the fore on Saturday lunchtime. With pockets of space likely to be appearing all over the pitch, there should be plenty of chances for both teams.

Bournemouth have so far scored four first half goals at home this season, which ranks up alongside the top teams in the league, whilst they have also conceded two during the first period, which is one of the poorer records in the Premier League.

Additionally, Tottenham have scored three first half away goals this season which, like Bournemouth, ranks towards the top of the league.

Hopefully we see some good football from the kick-off on Saturday lunchtime and I would seriously look at backing ‘Over 1.5 goals First Half Goals’ at 19/10.

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