Gary O’Neil welcomes praise of Bournemouth’s upturn in form
Gary O’Neil insists Bournemouth’s upturn in form deserves the praise it has received as his side prepare to continue their fight for Premier League survival on Saturday at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The Cherries sit three points above the bottom three in 15th place, having picked up three wins in their last five outings, including last week’s 1-0 victory at Leicester.
O’Neil hailed his players’ work-rate but admitted the importance of consistency during their remaining eight games of the campaign.
“Everybody – my team, the staff, the players – are giving absolutely everything. We’re working our socks off,” he said.
“The group, at the moment, deserves that praise that it gets but I’m very conscious we’ve achieved nothing at this moment.
“Every win feels big and that’s why we work so hard to put in as much as we can because we know the rewards at the end of the week are huge.
“But we’ll be working very hard over the next six or seven weeks to get ourselves out of it (risk of relegation) as quickly as we can.”
The Cherries face tough tests this month with a trip to Tottenham being followed up by crunch games at the bottom of the Premier League against West Ham, Southampton and Leeds.
O’Neil earmarked nine teams whose Premier League fate may be vulnerable as he highlighted the importance of his team solely focusing on themselves if they are to stay up.
“I don’t pay too much attention to the movement between places because one goal here or there can change an awful lot at the moment,” O’Neil said.
“We have a real focus on ourselves and, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, if we take care of ourselves, the rest of it shouldn’t matter to us too much.
“There are nine teams involved still, Crystal Palace have had two good results, so maybe they start to take themselves out of that now.”
After a positive week in training the Bournemouth boss remained confident ahead of their visit to Tottenham.
Cristian Stellini’s Spurs have equal motivation going into Saturday’s game as they look to take positive strides in their top-four bid – they sit three points behind Manchester United and Newcastle in fifth.
“A lot of work has gone in again this week to prepare for Tottenham as they’re a very good side,” O’Neil said.
“The lads are in a really good spot, trained well all week and we go there to put in a really good performance.”