AFC Bournemouth are currently a top-half team

There were no surprises in this weekend’s round of Premier League matches. But I just realised that my last two blog posts featured Bournemouth — so let’s go for the hat-trick here!

AFC Bournemouth’s (unsurprising, and very convincing) home win over Huddersfield Town on Saturday lifts them up to 9th place in this week’s alt-3 league table, just ahead of Leicester City (who, like Bournemouth, have had a relatively tough schedule of fixtures so far this season).

As I explained in last week’s blog post, Bournemouth almost certainly face the hardest first-half-season schedule of any club in the Premier League this year. In the ‘official’ league table, that will leave the Cherries around 2 points short of what would be a fair reflection of their real standing in the league at Christmas — the ‘fair reflection’ being the alt-3 table, of course!

So Bournemouth really are flying! And whatever league position they can get to by Christmas, the Cherries can look forward to what should be an easier fixture-list in the second half of the season.

Current schedule-strength charts:

(For other clubs’ charts, just click on the club name in the alt-3 league table.)