Howe hopes Brighton win can kick-start season

The Cherries had lost their first four games of the 2017/2018 Premier League season but came from behind at the Vitality Stadium on Friday night to secure the win.

The Bournemouth boss hopes the result can spark their season as they look to stay in the Premier League for a third successive season, and Howe says his side need to be "relaxed" to play their style of football.

"When you start a season, you want those first points on the board and that first win as quickly as you can. It's taken longer than we hoped but it has come now, and hopefully that can set us off," he said after the game.

"If you don't get that win early on, it makes it very difficult and the pressure is on the players and myself. With the way that we play, if you're playing pressurised, it's not going to work for us. We need to be relaxed and have a really good mentality to move the ball as we do and winning certainly helps that.

"In the first two-thirds of the pitch, I thought we were excellent. The message at half-time was to try and maintain that and we hoped the door would open. Unfortunately, we had to come from behind but it was more of a special achievement from the players."

Next up, Bournemouth face a trip to Everton next Saturday in the Premier League and Howe hopes his side can continue building up to their full potential ahead of the game.

"Hopefully it's a different feeling [in training], it's not nice when you're not winning," Howe said. "Although we've been in the Premier League for two years, I feel like we're not used to losing. We want to win and we need to win. Every team in the Premier League would say that, it's so difficult to achieve it.

"I want to see us play at our full level, we haven't done that yet, maybe we did in parts today but there's a lot more to come from the team."