Bournemouth and Wales attacker David Brooks says that it's been a season of mixed fortunes when it comes to the Cherries' season - but that the club fancies themselves to go up via the play-offs if they can maintain form.
Brooks was voted sixth in FourFourTwo's top 50 players in the Football League and won the Player of the Month award for the Championship in November. Now, the 23-year-old is targeting promotion with Bournemouth ahead of Euro 2020 in the summer.
Brooks is largely expected to be in the Wales squad that faces Italy, Turkey and Switzerland at the tournament, though missed the recent international break through injury. He'll certainly be hoping to play himself into contention for a start until the end of the season - especially if it benefits Bournemouth.
Huw Davies caught up with the mercurial midfielder to find out how he's found this season in the Championship and he's hoping for during the rest of the season.
The first half of this season went really well for you, as you won Championship Player of the Month for November. Are you pleasantly surprised by how well you came back after such a long-term injury?
Probably at the start I was playing all right, but over the past couple of months I haven’t really been doing as much as I wanted to, so it’s obviously just about trying to get back to playing my best football, really.
How have you found Bournemouth’s season on the whole, under Jason Tindall and now under Jonathan Woodgate?
As a team, we’re not exactly where we want to be. There was a dip in form from the whole team and it’s cost us in the long run, because we’re not challenging for automatic promotion – which, with the squad we’ve got, we probably should be. But we’re finishing the season stronger, and if we can continue winning and not losing, it puts us in real good stead for the playoffs.
Do you think you'll make it?
Hopefully, we can get in there. I’d back us to beat everyone that’s in the playoffs now. So, we’re still striving for a promotion, but it’s looking like we’ll have to go through the play-offs.
Is there any team in particular you’d like to avoid? Barnsley with their high pressing? Swansea, before their current blip?
Swansea have been in the top two for near enough the majority of the season – when we dropped out. Obviously, they’ve dropped out now. I think they’ve lost their last four games. We beat them once and we should’ve beaten them away. It just shows that we’re quite a dominant force when we actually… like, play well! If we get to the playoffs, we’re definitely not going to be scared of anyone in there. As long as we play well, we’ll back ourselves to go up.
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