With Max Gradel, Tyrone Mings and Callum Wilson sidelined with the same cruciate ligament injury, manager Eddie Howe has gone on record to dismiss any common link between those injuries.
Speaking in the Bournemouth Evening Echo, Howe is quoted as saying: "We’ve looked at all the injuries and have tried to collate as much data as we can. The difficulty we had is that they were all tackles, twists and impact injuries so the only thing we could think that would be different to last year would be the pitches. The pitches are different, they are newly-laid, but Callum’s injury happened at Stoke and I don’t see that being a common denominator in it. Our training is exactly the same as it was last year, we haven’t introduced anything new to the lads, so we are struggling to find a reason. If we could find a reason we would feel a lot better about the situation. It’s when you don’t know and it’s really just luck. It’s quite worrying for us that we have had such bad luck at the start of the season. I think it’s one of those things we have to accept. Unless we can find any kind of pattern with the injuries, we will go about our business in the same way".