Cherries: Hollands desperate to erase summers of woe

03 July 2010 07:00
Cherries star Danny Hollands is desperate to make it third time lucky as he bids to avoid the curse of his personal pre-season jinx.[LNB] The midfielder has endured frustrating warm-up campaigns for the past two years with injury ruling him out of Cherries' annual curtain raisers.[LNB] Hollands was forced to sit out the opening six weeks of last season after undergoing surgery on a persistent knee problem in July.[LNB] And the 24-year-old suffered a similar fate two years ago when a minor issue with the same knee sidelined him for the first two games of the season.[LNB] Hollands returned for the start of pre-season training on Thursday and is targeting a place in the Cherries team for their League One opener at Charlton on August 7.[LNB] He told the Daily Echo: It is fair to say I haven't had the best of luck during the past couple of pre-seasons. From a personal point of view, I'm just looking to get through unscathed because I would love to be at the Valley for the first game of the season.[LNB] The past couple of years have been difficult for me and I haven't had a great start.[LNB] I wasn't really fit enough when I returned last year so I need to get my fitness levels back to where they need to be. I'm the type of player who needs my fitness behind me because it is one of the key points to my game.[LNB] Hollands undertook VO2 max testing with the rest of the squad at Southampton Solent University on Thursday before the players took to the training pitches at Canford School yesterday.[LNB] He added: The games comes thick and fast during pre-season and we've got some great friendlies, you couldn't hand pick any better. In Spurs and Fulham, we've got two good Premier League clubs and Portsmouth and Derby are both big clubs in the Championship.[LNB] We've got a few new players so the competition for places is again going to be fierce.[LNB]

Source: Bournemouth_Echo