Bournemouth boss Gary O’Neil insists that his side don’t have a mental advantage over Everton ahead of Saturday’s Premier League showdown despite thrashing them 4-1 in Tuesday night’s Carabao Cup tie. The Cherries won comfortably with both sides making wholesale changes to their line-ups from their fixtures in the Premier League the previous weekend as the hosts made nine alterations and the Blues swapped their entire 11.
However, with significant switches in personnel expected for what will be the final game until Boxing Day as the English top flight takes an unprecedented mid-season break for the World Cup, O’Neil denies his charges will have the upper hand ahead of the second part of their double-header against Frank Lampard’s men, who go into the fixture one place above them in the table in 16th and with just one point more.
He said: “I don’t think it will have any bearing on Saturday’s game, I think they’re a fantastic team, you see the amount of changes that they made here and it was still a hell of a line-up that Frank puts out. They’re a very strong team, the game on Saturday will be completely different I’m sure with both teams not wanting to give too much away in this one in terms of shapes and what we usually do as well I guess, it will be a very, very different game and another difficult one for us.”
