Alex Smith, senior sports journalist at the Bournemouth Daily Echo, has explained how he expects the Cherries to approach Saturday's Premier League game against Brentford at Gtech Community Stadium (3pm kick-off GMT).

Andoni Iraola's side sat second after an impressive start to the season, but are winless since October.

Smith believes Bournemouth will press high and be aggressive, while also posing a counter-attacking threat.

What have you made of Bournemouth’s season to this point?

It has been in two parts, really - the first nine games and then the eight games since. The first nine games were excellent. They lost first up against Liverpool but played well and then went on an eight-game unbeaten run, which was a brilliant start and saw them as high as second at one point.

But since then, things have turned a little bit. There was a poor performance against Everton but, other than that, they have missed out by fine margins and lost games that, previously, they were drawing or winning.

So, it has been a bit frustrating, but the last couple of games before the draw with Burnley were encouraging. They picked up a good point at home against Chelsea on 6 December and then there was another good performance in the wild 4-4 draw at Manchester United.

They are hoping to build on those performances over the festive period and into the New Year.

Over the last two seasons, all sorts of club records have been broken in the Premier League. Do you think fans will be forgiving if that's not the case again this season, given that they lost pretty much the whole backline in the summer, for example?

That eight-game unbeaten run at the start raised expectations for the season as a whole, because they were playing so well and everyone seemed to have settled in very quickly, so the games after that brought them back down to Earth a little bit.

I do think they will probably be looking at a similar points return to last season. They will, at least, look to break that 50-point mark once again.

It depends on whether they can kick-start their form once again, and also a bit on the January window, but I think they can get there.

All eyes are going to be on Antoine Semenyo's future in January, but what do you think Bournemouth need to do in terms of incomings, if anything?

Well, a lot of it will hinge on Semenyo's future. If he goes, they will have a decent amount of cash to spend and they will be looking at bolstering the squad from there.

I do feel they had a good window in the summer. They bought in positions where they needed to buy; they try and do most of their purchasing in the summer and try and limit it in the winter.

I do wonder if they might go for another goalkeeper. They only have two senior keepers at the moment and they might look to get in someone else. Djordje Petrović has been decent overall, but has had a couple of relatively high-profile errors and goals where he possibly could have done better.

He will be hoping to bounce back and get a couple of good performances in before the January window, but whether they might look to bring in someone maybe with a bit more experience as a no.2 would be interesting to see.

Other than that, I think they will just be bolstering and bringing in depth where they can, if they can get the right sort of players in.

Which player should Brentford fans be keeping an eye out on Saturday?

Semenyo is the obvious answer, but left-back Adrien Truffert has been really good since joining in the summer.

He is probably the pick of the new signings.

Can you give us a reminder of what Brentford should expect from Bournemouth in terms of shape and style?

Andoni Iraola tends to deploy a 4-2-3-1 formation, with a no.6 and a no.8 behind a no.10 and a low no.9. They press very high, very aggressively, winning the ball high up the pitch. That is the aim.

They will try and be aggressive on that front and try and create as many chances as they can. They tend to be more of a volume team and have lots of chances and score a few of them.

They do not like to sit and be neutral and let a team play in front of them, they will be getting out to them and being aggressive in that respect. They are very good on transition as well, with a lot of pace in the team.

They can break at speed and they look to hit teams on the counter attack. When the play is a bit broken up and a bit less structured, that is when the team seems to thrive.

What’s your score prediction?

Bournemouth have had a tough time against Brentford recently, but I am going to back them to break that run and I am going to go for a 2-1 win for the Cherries.