Bournemouth vs Swansea City
FA Cup
4th round
Thursday
25th January 2024
Vitality Stadium
The most comprehensive preview, detailed analysis and reliable predictions of the FA Cup 4th round fixture between Bournemouth and Swansea City.
Bournemouth vs Swansea City: Preview
Bournemouth form analysis
Despite an encouraging festive period, Bournemouth were brought back down to earth in deflating fashion in their latest Premier League outing. A 4-0 thrashing at home to title-chasing Liverpool made it back-to-back defeats for the struggling Cherries to leave them mired in the relegation zone. That chastening loss followed a 3-1 reverse away at Champions League-chasers Tottenham, though Bournemouth battled well for long periods in defeat against elite opposition.
Indeed, the manager will have taken heart from three consecutive wins in late December built on talisman Dominic Solanke’s lethal finishing. But failure to significantly strengthen in the January window amid financial restraints leaves Bournemouth underpowered for the looming relegation fight. With the league’s leakiest defence and continued over-reliance on Solanke’s goals up front, Bournemouth face a huge battle to avoid an immediate return to the Championship. Finding greater defensive resilience and attacking inspiration to ease the goalscoring burden on Solanke is imperative.
Swansea City form analysis
After an inconsistent first half of the season, Swansea’s difficulties continued recently as they suffered three defeats in four Championship outings to slide down to 16th in the table. Their latest disappointment came in a 3-1 home loss to Southampton, exiting meekly after falling two goals behind early on. That followed back-to-back league draws against Birmingham and Coventry, either side of a New Year’s Day win over struggling West Brom.
Overall, goalscoring has been a real issue for the manager’s possession-based style of play. Scoring just four times across their winless league run highlights this bluntness going forward. At the other end, keeping clean sheets has been a recurring problem all season. Tightening up defensively and finding more attacking inspiration must be priorities for Swansea as they seek to push up into playoff contention after a disappointing first half of the campaign.
