Currently sitting in a handily-placed 5th position, Bournemouth's success this season seems to have a lot to do with the settled nature of Sean O'Driscoll's squad, and some superb away form. As a result, the Cherries potentially pose a real threat to our unbeaten home record.

While their record at the Fitness First stadium is only average, they have won five of their nine games on their travels and have the second best away record in the division. So far they've only lost to Hull (on the opening day), Luton and Brentford - that last defeat coming on 4th september. Since then their away record reads P5 W4 D1 - and they've currently won three on the spin. While the opposition in those games hasn't been top quality, they have done enough to pick up the wins and are showing the likes of Pools how it should be done - if we had beaten Peterborough, Oldham, MK Dons and Sheffield Wednesday on their own turf, as Bournemouth have, we'd be second in the table instead of 13th.

All in all Pools will probably be quite pleased then that our opponents had to get through a Cup Replay with Forest Green on Wednesday, and will also be without leading scorer James Hayter. The 14 goal forward is struggling with a knee injury, and as their most potent goal threat by some distance - no-one else has scored more than 5, with Stock and Rodrigues having just three league goals each compared to Hayter's 11. Pools may also be relieved to hear that sometime Poolie and now Bournemouth Legend Steve Fletcher is unlikely to be involved after missing the midweek cup tie with a Hamstring problem.

Meanwhile Neale Cooper would surely be tearing his hair out at Pools injury problems if he had any left on his head. He'll be without Clark, Clarke, Robertson and Gobern for certain, while there are doubts over Eifion Williams, Steven Istead and Matty Robson; the first two should be fit to take part, while Robson has been suffering with a cold this week. We could well see John Brackstone slot in at left back, Williams out wide on the right again, and Porter continuing to partner Boyd up front - but the bench will almost certainly contain at least two youth teamers and possibly three if Coops decides that Istead, Foley and Wilkinson all deserve places. It's more likely though that Barron, Strachan, Istead and one of Wilkinson and Foley will be joining Jim Provett among the subs, which looks a little better on experince until it comes to the attacking players at least. Although the number of players out may initially seem quite daunting, when you look a little further you realise that one of them has yet to play this season anyway, one has been out since early in the season, and the other two are both very recent arrivals - Gobern has only made one start! Meanwhile the player that's possibly the biggest doubt of the other three - Robson - is widely regarded as being a weak link when playing at left back, and he might be under threat for his place from Brackstone even if he does recover in time for the match. All of a sudden, things don't seem quite so grim.

Dimi Konstantopoulos has been talking on the Official Site about how this is a crucial game, and at the moment that's true of all our home fixtures. We're having to rely on the home form to keep us afloat, and until we can start picking up a few points away from home it's always going to add that extra bit of pressure on us to keep winning at the Vic. Can we clock up another victory on Saturday? Bournemouth are a good footballing side, and are in pretty good form (especially away) so this is no easy task. I'm going for a 1-1 draw, with Porter to grab the Pools goal.

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