Adam Smith

Smith arrived at Bournemouth as a converted winger, and that background still shapes how he plays the position now, pushing forward on the overlap or cutting inside off the underlap rather than simply holding the line. Years in the lower leagues on loan taught him a defensive discipline the raw winger never had, which is why the finished version balances attacking instinct with genuine positional sense. Captaining the side is as much about knowing when to organise a nervous back four as anything he does with the ball.

The question that follows a player this experienced is always the legs, whether the recovery pace that used to erase mistakes has faded along with everything else that ages first in a full back. He answers it every week simply by still being selected ahead of younger options. How much longer that lasts is entirely up to him.