Bournemouth: Andoni Iraola overseeing 'one of greatest turnarounds in Premier League' history

In late October they were 19th in the Premier League table with three points and zero wins from their first nine games of the season.

More than £100 million had been splashed in the summer and pretty much every single signing was either out with a long-term injury or deemed not good enough to play.

Just to rub salt into the wounds, the man they had so ruthlessly and controversially sacked in June - Gary O'Neil, who was performing brilliantly at Wolves - had just returned to the Vitality Stadium to mastermind a 2-1 victory with a gut-punching 89th-minute winner.

It was a total disaster. Andoni Iraola had tried to change too much, too fast. Bournemouth had tried to change too much, too fast, naively pushing for a full-club rebrand after just one year back in the top-flight.

Cherries doing the unthinkable

Just six months later, we are witnessing one of the greatest mid-season turnarounds in Premier League history.

Nobody comes back from a nine-game winless streak at the start of the year. Surely nobody has ever bounced back to finish in the top half; to draw level on points with Chelsea as we approach the final few rounds of matches.

Maybe they just aren’t sexy enough. Maybe it takes more than six months to accept and internalise a change in what AFC Bournemouth represents.

Whatever the reason, as we enter May, Iraola and Bournemouth still haven’t quite captured the public imagination. It is wholly unfair.

For context, Iraola’s turnaround is just as emphatic as Unai Emery’s at Aston Villa last year, perhaps even more so.

Europe-level production

Villa were 17th on 12 points from the first 13. They won 49 from 25 games under Emery, finishing fifth in the league table since his appointment.

Bournemouth, since that opening nine, have won 45 points from 26 matches – and are also fifth in the form guide.

Iraola isn’t getting Emery-level love just yet, but if these performances continue into next season Bournemouth will be challenging for Europe and their manager will suddenly be all the rage.

There is a good chance that will happen, because thanks to a total buy-in at Bournemouth they already look like a fully-formed Iraola team.

Iraola's style embedded

Iraola coaches ultra-hard pressing and extremely fast transitions, the idea being to catch opponents on the counter-attack by pouring fast and direct runners into the final third after their meticulously-drilled pressing traps win back possession.

This season, Bournemouth are exactly that, topping the charts for Opta’s measure of ‘direct speed’ (1.99) and hitting the third-fewest passes per sequence (2.71), which combined together makes them the most vertically-inclined team in the league.

They’re also top six for PPDA (passes per defensive action - 10.8) and high turnovers (315), plus no team has attempted more take-ons than the Cherries.

In other words, there is a strong statistical underpinning for their form, telling us they can continue into next year – especially if they have more luck with new signings.

For one reason or another, Tyler Adams (1), Hamed Traore (0), and Romain Faivre (0) have started just one Premier League game between them while Max Aarons (12) and Alex Scott (10) have been plagued with injuries and struggled to get going.

Cherries yet to peak

Those five together represent more than £70million of the £108million Bournemouth spent on players over the summer.

Scott is finally finding his feet, as is Justin Kluivert – with three goals in his last six – but arguably 20-year-old left-back Milos Kerkez and loanee Luis Sinisterra have been the only successful additions so far.

That tells us Iraola and Bournemouth are yet to peak.

It also tells us, perhaps, that losing technical director Richard Hughes to Liverpool this summer won’t be that big a loss, even if he is credited with historic successes like Dominic Solanke, Nathan Ake and Tyrone Mings. Bournemouth need better luck, judgement, or both in the upcoming window.

Should they achieve that – and one would assume they can target a higher calibre of player now there is evidence of Iraola’s transformation – then there’s every reason to believe they can carry these performances into a full 38-game season.

After all, that bad start was entirely down to the players needing time to learn the complexities and intricacies of the system.

Future is bright at Vitality

All hard-pressing teams take time to gel because the strategy is inherently high-risk.

It only takes one player to be slightly out of position, or one attacker to press in the wrong moment, and the system comes down like a house of cards, hence why Bournemouth conceded 20 goals in their first nine Premier League games.

Positional errors were commonplace, undermining sparks of quality. They took the lead in four of those nine games only to lose and, according to Opta, made eight mistakes leading to an opposition shot during that time.

They have made just five since, meaning they have made the sixth-fewest in the division overall despite an error-prone start. It is arguably the best evidence we have of how tough they found Iraola’s methods early on - and how brilliantly they have enacted them since November.

It’s all the more impressive (and the slow start all the more understandable) when you consider just how dramatic the shift has been from O’Neil. In 2022-23 Bournemouth were near the foot of the table for shot-ending high turnovers (20th), pressed sequences (20th) and PPDA (18th).

O’Neil did an excellent job keeping this team up. Everybody said it was an over-achievement given the quality of the squad.

But Iraola, with virtually no new players having an impact, has turned Bournemouth into a club ready to challenge for Europe and rewritten their DNA in the process. It’s about time he gets recognition for it.

More from Sporting Life

• Fixtures, results and live scores
• Expert xG analysis and features
• Transfer news and done deals
• Football and other sports tips
• Download our free iOS and Android app
• Podcasts and video content

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.