On a night when all eyes were on the Champions League, the Premier League witnessed its biggest comeback win in more than 20 years.
Away from the television cameras and the drama in Madrid and Dortmund, Bournemouth and Luton played out one of the most extraordinary Premier League matches of this or any recent season.
Bournemouth won 4-3, having been three goals down at the break.
Dominic Solanke’s exquisite turn and finish started the comeback five minutes after half-time, and after Illia Zabarnyi bundled in a header for 2-3, Antoine Semenyo completed the comeback with a pair of powerful finishes – the second with only six minutes remaining.
“It’s unreal,” Semenyo told BBC Match of the Day. “It is an achievement of mine just playing in the Premier League so to get a winning goal for the team, I’m buzzing.”
It meant Bournemouth became only the fifth team in Premier League history to win a match in which they trailed by three goals, and just the third to do so in a game where they were 3-0 down at half-time.
The others to achieve this feat were Manchester United in beating Spurs 5-3 in September 2001 – in the game of Sir Alex Ferguson’s “lads, it’s Tottenham” half-time team talk – and Wolves v Leicester in October 2003.
According to Semenyo, there was no Ferguson-esque pithy line from Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola at half-time. In fact he seemed to say very little to his team, as the Cherries were out for the second half early – so early in fact that it caught the forward off guard.
“I was on the bike actually when everyone was running out so I had to scurry out quickly. It was because we were ready to go and put a performance on for the fans and for ourselves.”
Antoine Semenyo scored his seventh goal of the season as he fired in Bournemouth’s winner against Luton
More importantly for Iraola’s side than any Premier League record, this result surely confirms their status as a top flight team for another season.
Bournemouth, with 10 matches remaining, are 14 points above the relegation zone – their points total puts them closer to the top six than the bottom three.
“Everything went for Luton in the first half, they were really clinical, every time they arrived [in the box] they scored,” Iraola told the BBC.
“We needed something to happen early in the second half, the first goal from Dom [Solanke] was key. Then everyone started believing, we kept putting up the pressure and in the end we came back.
BBC
