Having struggled for efficiency in front of goal for much of the 2024-25 Premier League season, Bournemouth have suddenly found another level.
It was billed as the battle of the overachievers, a fight between unlikely European hopefuls upsetting the established order, two clubs punching above their weight and doing things their own way.
Bournemouth vs Nottingham Forest may not have been a contest involving two of the Premier League’s so-called “big six” clubs and won’t have been marked in many calendars when the fixtures were announced. But given the discourse around them heading into the game, most would’ve probably agreed it to be one of standout games of the weekend, if not the standout.
And it very much proved to be that, just perhaps not in the way most expected.
Bournemouth ran out comprehensive 5-0 winners, making it their biggest top-flight win since beating Brighton by the same scoreline in April 2019.
The Cherries made light work of a Forest side who’ve prided themselves on their defensive solidity this season. Keeping games tight in order to pick off teams on the counter or via clinical finishing has been vital to Nuno Espírito Santo’s men, but at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday they were outmanoeuvred, outfought and punished by their hosts’ superior finishing.
Dango Ouattara stole the headlines with a hat-trick, the third by a Bournemouth player this season, while Justin Kluivert and Antoine Semenyo got the other two goals.
It improved Bournemouth’s unbeaten run to 11 matches in the Premier League, extending what was already a club record.
What makes their form even more remarkable is how many players head coach Andoni Iraola has been without. On Saturday, they had nine players unavailable, including both of their recognised centre-forwards; Evanilson isn’t expected back until April, while Enes Ünal won’t play again this season after tearing his anterior cruciate ligament earlier this month.
Evanilson and Ünal suffered their respective injuries just a few days apart in a double blow that many felt could derail Bournemouth’s season – not because either had necessarily been prolific, rather that Iraola’s well-oiled machine would suddenly require tweaking.
To say Bournemouth have taken such bad luck in their stride would be an understatement.
Since both Evanilson and Ünal were ruled out, Bournemouth have played four games in all competitions, scored 16 times and not lost once. Their 5-1 hammering of Championship side West Brom in the FA Cup obviously requires a pinch of salt to be added to those facts, but then you remember who they’ve faced in the league over the same period.
They were a matter of minutes away from a 2-1 win at Stamford Bridge before Reece James’ dramatic equaliser for Chelsea; they thrashed Newcastle 4-1 at St James’ Park after Eddie Howe’s side had tallied six wins on the bounce; and then the Cherries dealt high-flying Forest their heaviest defeat of the season and brought an abrupt end to their eight-match unbeaten streak.
At long last, Bournemouth are showing improvement in one of the few areas they’d been somewhat lacking.
The graphic below, for example, shows how the Cherries’ goal difference on a rolling six-game average has been below their xG difference (difference between xG for and xG against) for much of Iraola’s time in charge. At the moment, though, their goal difference is outstripping their xG difference, reflecting greater efficiency at both ends.
After the 1-0 win over Everton on 4 January, Bournemouth had underperformed in relation to their non-penalty expected goals by a whopping 10.2; they’d scored 25 Premier League (excluding penalties) from chances worth 35.2 xG.
So, although only three teams in the league had generated higher-value opportunities, Bournemouth ranked 13th for non-penalty goals scored, six fewer even than Wolves.
At the time, the team with the next worst underperformance in relation to their non-penalty xG were Crystal Palace, but their 6.7 represented quite an improvement on Bournemouth’s record.
Essentially, then, although Bournemouth have been widely lauded for much of the season, there was an argument they should’ve been doing even better.
Fast-forward a few weeks and the picture looks considerably better for Bournemouth on the finishing front.
They scored one non-penalty goal against Chelsea from 0.4 non-pen xG; their four goals at Newcastle came from 2.3 xG; and their five at home to Forest came from 1.7 xG.
It’s the first time this season they’ve outperformed their non-pen xG in three successive matches, while their +3.3 and +1.7 figures from the past two games represent their best outputs of 2024-25.
With those three games taken into account, Bournemouth are now only underperforming in relation to their non-penalty xG by 4.5 – Palace (6.1), Manchester United (5.8) and Southampton (5.6) all have poorer records, with the Cherries’ figures seemingly going in the right direction.
But there’s still ground for them to make up.
The graphic below visualises the rolling averages of Bournemouth’s xG for and against in the league since the start of last season, showing how they’ve generally been more effective at creating chances than their opponents have against them.
But then it also raises the question of underperformance.
For instance, we can use xG data (for and against) to analyse expected points in conjunction with actual points to get an idea of which teams are overperforming or underperforming in the table.
Our expected points model simulates the number of goals scored by each side in every match based on the xG value of all shots taken. It then uses the simulated number of goals to determine the match outcome (win/draw/loss). Every match is then simulated 10,000 times, allowing the expected points for each team to be calculated based on the proportion of simulations they win/draw/lose.
This isn’t an exact science, of course, as xG data doesn’t account for several factors, such as game state and dangerous periods of possession that don’t lead to shots. But it’s still a decent barometer of how teams have performed to this point.
As you can see, according to the expected points table below, Bournemouth ought to be third, four places higher than their real position of seventh. This, then, partially highlights the impact of their wastefulness in front of goal this season.
And yet, with their two centre-forwards absent and facing opponents in Newcastle and Forest who’ll have ranked among some teams’ toughest adversaries this term, Bournemouth produced ruthless attacking displays.
It’s pretty difficult to nail down specifically what – if anything – has changed at this point. It wouldn’t be fair to pin their xG underperformance on Evanilson or Ünal, as the Brazilian’s five goals from 5.8 xG hardly sets off alarm bells, while his understudy has only played 331 minutes in the Premier League this term.
One theory is that perhaps they benefitted from being even more direct than usual in the past two games. Against Newcastle they progressed up the pitch at 2.44 metres per second, while that figure was 2.38 against Forest – both were considerable increases from their average of 2.04 metres per second beforehand.
Potentially linked to that is the fact they managed seven shot-ending fast breaks across the two matches, having only previously managed a maximum of five over a two-game spell this term – those attacks yielded three goals against Forest as well.
It’s also worth highlighting that across the pitch they were less intense without the ball in these games than they are generally. For example, their 140 pressures at Newcastle and 125 against Forest were both way down on their seasonal average of 200; they were also some way off their average of 74.2 pressures in the final third (54 vs Newcastle, 31 vs Forest).
Nevertheless, it’s obviously risky to draw too many conclusions from such a small sample size. They could come crashing back to earth when they host Liverpool this weekend, while there may not have been any specific changes made by Iraola that led to this sudden goal explosion. It could just be a reflection of variance.
After all, xG suggests that over time goals scored marries fairly closely with expected figures, meaning it might just be that Bournemouth’s luck has changed. Or perhaps it’s a sign their excellent form is leading to improved confidence and fluency.
But, considering their injury crisis, the level Bournemouth are playing at reflects very well on Iraola. While there’s always a concern that high-intensity sides can run out of steam towards the end of a season, players returning from injuries over the next month or so might just slow any collective fatigue.
Whatever the explanation for the recent uptick in their goalscoring efficiency, it marks another sudden step in the right direction for Bournemouth. It could even hint that they’re still getting better, with dreams of European football getting more realistic by the week.
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