In a Premier League season filled with surprise success stories, AFC Bournemouth had an argument for being the most compelling. With a young manager in Andoni Iraola implementing an attack-minded and pressing-oriented style, the Cherries surprised with a push towards a well-deserved 9th place. The once perpetually relegation-threatened team now appears to be well-established in the Premier League, looking closer to European competition than they are to the drop zone.

But Bournemouth are also running into the same “victims of their own success”-type problems that many teams of their budget and standing in the game have before them. Two members of their starting back line have departed, with rumours of vultures (Paris Saint-Germain) circling for another. They’ve held on to their manager, but fans will have to endure endless speculation about his departure every time a rich club has a vacancy.

The Cherries won’t be worried about survival, but they will be wondering if improvement on last season’s impressive finish is possible after losing two young superstars. If they do get better, the hype around their young manager is only going to grow.

Bournemouth had a slightly above average attack and defense, and performed at almost dead on their xG. They scored a couple fewer and conceded a couple fewer than the xG numbers, but this is pretty close to dead on expectations.

As the season went on, Bournemouth’s attack slowed down a bit. This corresponded with an injury to starting striker Evanilson, and the club struggled to replace him in the lineup. However, the Cherries’ defense also improved as the year went on, as young defenders Dean Huijsen and Ilya Zabarnyi got more experience, both in the league and as center back partners.

Unless some young academy products and returning loanees step up, Bournemouth looks likely to face a similar problem going into this coming season. They’re clearly top-half quality when their first choice starting XI is intact, but there are a handful of key players who the club does not have adequate cover for, and they may struggle more than most teams if injuries pile up.

Iraola’s Bournemouth look to win the ball up high early after losing possession, and are adept at settling back into a mid-block if they don’t recover possession in the first phase. They play almost exclusively in a 4-2-3-1 midfield with a double pivot midfield and a No. 10 who is much more runner than playmaker. In possession, one fullback usually overlaps while the other plays more conservatively, leaving 3 defenders back while still threatening to create some wide overloads.

The Cherries were extremely impressive at creating shots off their high press, and you should expect that to continue to be a hallmark of their style this season.

Defensively, Bournemouth had very high PPDA and took defensive actions farther from their own goal on average than you might expect from a mid-table team. The work rate of their defensive midfielders — usually Tyler Adams and Ryan Christie, though several players had to fill in at this role — made it difficult for opponents to exploit space if they broke the first line of pressure, as did the athleticism of their center backs.

The low number of counter-attacking shots conceded is extremely impressive for a team that presses as high as they do.

You rarely see Bournemouth’s combination of well-drilled defending and athleticism from a mid-budget team. While the individual star power at center back certainly made that a bit easier to pull off, this is a team that has frequently looked better than the sum of its individual parts, and the manager deserves credit for that. Players look like they understand their individual roles, and how they relate to their teammates’ roles, in all phases of play under Iraola.

The extensive demands of Iraola’s system and some of Bournemouth’s higher-profile injuries led to concerns about the effects of the coach on fitness, but the injuries weren’t quite as bad as you might think. Bournemouth had 153 collective games missed and had 83% average availability from first team players last season. That’s nowhere near as bad as last year’s injury table podium, who were all under 80%: Brentford, Brighton, and Arsenal.

There have been some massive departures, but for the most part, Bournemouth have managed to keep their squad together so far this summer.

Players out: LB Milos Kerkez, CB Dean Huijsen, GK Kepa Arrizabalaga, GK Mark Travers

While Bournemouth fans won’t be happy to see Milos Kerkez and Dean Huijsen go, they (and management) should be thrilled that Iraola’s style of play led to their valuations skyrocketing and top clubs seeing them as ideal targets. This is how you get exciting young players to want to choose your club, and should make recruitment much easier for Bournemouth going forward.

Huijsen did a bit of everything at the back, and we’ll get into more detail about him specifically (and Ilya Zabarnyi) in a section below.

Kerkez looks surprisingly unimpressive on event data. Liverpool would have likely been impressed by the faux-tracking data that can be created off video these days — Kerkez is obviously fast and covers a lot of ground, so he has probably not reached his ceiling as a footballer yet — but this is not irreplaceable output. He was undoubtedly a good player, but his highlights might have caused fans to overrate his overall contribution a touch.

Arrizabalaga had an above average, but not spectacular season in goal. This is reflected in Bournemouth not trying to seriously rival Arsenal for his permanent signature, and Kepa not finding a better job than pure backup for a big club. He was a good loan signing, and also can be replaced easily.

Players in: LB Adrien Truffert, GK Đorđe Petrović

Kerkez will be replaced by a two-headed monster at left back. 20-year-old Julio Soler joined from Lanus last January, but was given time to settle in and barely featured. He’s played in preseason and will likely rotate this year.

The more direct replacement for Kerkez is 23-year-old Adrien Truffert, who signed from Rennes. His profile is quite similar to Kerkez, with the club clearly going for athletic ability and work rate over other qualities. He covers a ton of ground, doesn’t get beat easily, and gets into good positions to hit square balls and cutbacks. However, he’s not much of a ball progressor.

With Kepa departing, Bournemouth have gone to another Chelsea player to fill their need at goalkeeper. And, suggesting they’re very confident in their ability to scout Ligue 1, they’ve also gone for another player who’s coming off an excellent season in France. Đorđe Petrović had an outstanding campaign while on loan at BlueCo subsidiary Strasbourg, putting up excellent shot-stopping numbers.

His previous campaign at Chelsea was not very good, so Bournemouth must be confident the jump in his numbers is the result of genuine improvement. If he settles into somewhere halfway between these two radars, the Cherries will be happy with their purchase.

And a quick summary:

Bournemouth’s new signings made major positive contributions to their teams last year and look like great pickups. But they’re in very obvious need of a center back signing before the window closes.

But Bournemouth require some additional notes about returning loanees who are not new arrivals, but might feel like it. Hamed Traorè scored 10 goals for Auxerre as an attacking midfielder last season, and might be an interesting addition to the squad. And then there’s Eli Junior Kroupi, who did this in Ligue 2:

It’ll be interesting to see if he ends up rotating in at striker, or if he goes out on another loan before the window shuts.

Bournemouth will be returning several attackers who had good seasons, but I feel like Antoine Semenyo is their biggest potential ceiling-raiser. He’s played off both wings, but was probably at his best playing off the left side and cutting towards the top of the box.

His shot volume is excellent, he gets into the box constantly, and he’s a plus dribbler.

Semenyo did take his fair share of poor shots last season, and Bournemouth will certainly want him to get a little less wasteful. However, he did get into quality positions frequently, and showed that he can be a goal threat from anywhere around the box, no matter his starting position.

The reason I’ve picked out Semenyo as the key player Bournemouth need to perform this season is because he was rather inconsistent last year. His best games stood out as some of the most spectacular performances anyone put in last season — Semenyo’s early-season performance against Newcastle was particularly memorable — but he was overshadowed by Justin Kluivert and Dango Ouattara in the second half of the campaign.

Semenyo scored 8 goals in his first full Premier League campaign, then 11 last season. If he can show the best version of himself on a regular basis, that number should go up once again.

Dean Huijsen has already departed for Real Madrid, and while he is still a Bournemouth player at time of publishing, Ilya Zabarnyi continues to be constantly linked to a PSG sale. These two were the absolute rocks at the back of the Cherries’ defense, with Huijsen making the more aggressive plays and Zabarnyi looking like the more composed, consistent defender. They were an exceptional partnership.

While Iraola’s system isn’t quite as wide open and extreme as Ange Postecoglu’s was at Tottenham Hotspur, the utter defensive collapse that Spurs experienced when their first choice defensive partnership were unavailable serves as a bit of a cautionary tale. Bournemouth usually have a much better shape in front of their back four and have very hard working defensive midfielders, but an aggressive high press inevitably leads to your central defenders occasionally getting isolated in 2v2s (or worse) in space.

Rotation CB Marcos Senesi, returning loanee Chris Mepham and youngster James Hill might be decent players who are ready for more minutes, but there’s a significant dropoff in quality from Huijsen and Zabarnyi to those players. We’re going to find out very quickly how much Bournemouth’s pressing game was propped up by elite center back play, or if the players in front of the center backs made the real difference defensively.

Bournemouth will see enough rotation at a handful of positions that it might not particularly matter who the first choice XI is, but this is my best guess at their best lineup. No slight to Tyler Adams, who had an excellent campaign, but I thought Lewis Cook and Ryan Christie were the Cherries’ top midfield partnership last season.

Julian Araujo was injured for much of last season, but made some starts at the end of the season and has been fit for this preseason. I think he’ll gradually get more minutes than 34-year-old club captain Adam Smith. Zabarnyi departing for PSG and an experienced central defender arriving via the transfer market seems inevitable.

Some dropoff is to be expected given the departures, but Bournemouth have progressed well past a relegation battle. They should finish comfortably mid-table.

Prediction: 12th