His six league goals help the Cherries avoid relegation last season and he has been rewarded ahead of the new campaign.
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Eddie Howe received a lot of praise last season for his efforts in not only keeping Bournemouth in the top flight but also for the quality of football his side produced.
“I think Zlatan will probably play”.
Bournemouth and Morecambe have met on four previous occasions, all in League Two, with the Cherries winning their last clash 1-0 at home back in March 2010. All guns should be blazing too for the expected fast start on the back of a victory in the Community Shield over Leicester with big guns Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrikh Mkhitaryan set to start while Paul Pogba waits in the wings following his arrival at Old Trafford this week.
‘I think that is natural in the Premier League – you are not going to win as many games as you did in the Championship – but there were games I thought we should have won and we didn’t so our obvious goal is to try and improve our home form and maintain our away form.
Bournemouth’s next opponents in this competition came through a first round thriller away at Rotherham, coming through with a 5-4 win after extra time.
“The belief was there that we could achieve our goal and stay in the league”.
“I don’t take these games for granted”.
Howe acknowledged Ibrahimovic’s ability but insisted it would be wrong to pick out just one player in Jose Mourinho’s expensively assembled squad.
The former Sweden global started in United’s Community Shield tie against the Premier League champions Leicester and scored the winning goal in the 2-1 victory at Wembley. I think it suits us for where we are, I have no problem with it.
“I think with the size of the stadium and the name that we have, I think we will be classed as underdogs for a long period of time until maybe something changes with the ground and we become a little bit bigger in scale”.
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“Everybody individually has been written off at one moment or another”.
