After beating Premier League title contenders Arsenal and drawing away to current UEFA Champions League leaders Aston Villa, the fixture list for the Cherries continued at pace with the visit of the current Premier League and FIFA Club World Cup winners Manchester City.
Ahead of the game a lot of the pre-match talk was about the visitor’s apparent injury crisis, this proved to be a distraction as only a few of their first choice players were actually unavailable and all had been recent long-term injuries.
The next excuse was Manchester City having a couple of days less preparation time ahead of the match and they had the inconvenience of travelling down from London. All of this, despite the billions of pounds spent, the squad full of top-class internationals, and a record of never losing to AFC Bournemouth in 18 matches (including 15 consecutive victories in the top flight of English football), was supposed to make the Manchester City players feel like they were up against it, a faux motivational tactic by Pep Guardiola, which failed.
Manchester City’s 32 Premier League game unbeaten run came to a crashing end as goals from Antoine Semenyo and Evanilson brushed Manchester City aside, the Cherries outperformed the visitors in every area of the pitch and until late on in the game Manchester City offered no attacking threat and had no answer to the Cherries set-up.
After the match, AFC Bournemouth head coach Andoni Iraola told Sky Sports…
“It feels great. It’s very difficult to beat City. You have to enjoy this today; tomorrow we will start to think about Brentford.
“Apart from the result, I’m very proud of the performance. To beat them deservedly is even more difficult and even if we suffered until the end, I think we deserved this one.
“I’ve lost so many times against him [Guardiola], so you have to enjoy when the day arrives!
“It is the first Premier League game they lost in 2024 and we are in November. You have to enjoy it because you know it’s not going to happen a lot.”
Man of the match against Manchester City
Semenyo
Kerkez
Evanilson
Senesi
Smith
Cook
Tavernier
Travers
Kluivert
Christie
Zabarnyi
All of them
‘We played with no fear’ 💪
Andoni Iraola reacts to Bournemouth’s 2-1 win against Manchester City. pic.twitter.com/GrYMpcRilM
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) November 2, 2024
Wow! @afcbournemouth defeat the reigning champions!
Man City’s 32-match unbeaten run comes to an end!#BOUMCI pic.twitter.com/YHbVcMYqKM
— Premier League (@premierleague) November 2, 2024
darwinsdummy
Absolutely monumental stuff from the team. Going into Arsenal, Villa, and City back to back to back you might hope to snatch a point or two if lucky, we just a walked away with 7.
This is the first time Man City have trailed by 2+ goals in the Premier League since January 2023 (vs Spurs), 653 days ago #BOUMCI pic.twitter.com/FHXrwIAwDd
— Opta Analyst (@OptaAnalyst) November 2, 2024
thegazzyb
I knew it! I knew it!
We totally deserved that win, we should have scored another couple.
Gutted to lose the clean sheet and their goal did make for a nervy finish.
If City had somehow come away with a draw from that game it would have been incredibly harsh on us !
Three points and another unbeaten record destroyed by the mighty Cherries! Get in!
19/10: Bournemouth 2-0 Arsenal ✅
02/11: Bournemouth 2-1 Man City ✅The Cherries toppling top sides just weeks apart! 🍒🔥 pic.twitter.com/hfNCbkEDg9
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) November 2, 2024
Def_II_Royalz
That was the most excruciating final 15 minutes since Brentford away in 94-95. Unbelievable stuff. In Semanyo, the most complete winger performance I’ve ever seen for us – Walker was utterly roasted by him. Cook has to be in England contention now. Hard to single anyone out though really. We rode our luck in the end but that was not a flukey win, we went man to man with those tw@ts for most of the match and played some really good, attractive football. Glad we’ll never be title contenders… my heart can’t take too much more of this! – To join the conversation, click here.
