Michail Antonio was left unmarked to nod home at a corner five minutes in, with the away side doubling their lead with another header seven minutes later, Lucas Paqueta the scorer. Declan Rice powered home a third after Cherries survived the initial cross at a corner, before Pablo Fornals added a fourth in the second period. Conceding from dead-balls has been a common theme from this campaign. Rice’s 43rd minute strike was the 20th goal let in from either a corner or a free-kick, with Cherries also conceding from six penalties.
Ryan Christie said: “It’s not a good stat. At the same time, especially against the bigger teams, we’ve conceded a lot of corners as well. It probably accumulates to that. Obviously frustrating to concede a goal anyway, but especially set-pieces, when we work on them every week and we worked them especially on Friday. So West Ham again, probably a team that were focusing on that stuff like that coming into today’s game. And first one is really cheap. Second one, obviously, just kind of drops and it is a good strike. Another day, somebody blocks that. Frustrating, I think just because of the manner we concede in terms of how well we played in the first half.”
Asked what the mood in the dressing room was like,
Ryan Christie responded: “It’s alright, obviously frustrated. Going into the game, we wanted to get a positive result, especially on the run of form we’re on and after last week as well. Sounds maybe a bit ridiculous, but we played all right first half. It was just two set-plays and an aimless ball in the box that killed us. Probably makes it a little bit more frustrating. Half time I was going in thinking I couldn’t believe we were 3-0 down. But that’s sometimes what the Premier League is, it comes down to each box. And today obviously not our day, but still a massive week ahead, so can’t be too down. We go on to Thursday.”
