**Andoni Iraola**is not under any illusions. **Bournemouth**are bouncing after a 1-0 win at **Tottenham**heading into the international break, but he feels that the side still need time to forge "collectiveness."
‘Probably we miss a central defender’
The start of September also marks the end of the summer transfer window. Iraola has not been hands-on with recruitment, but he hinted that there could be more business conducted before the deadline.
“I think that there is going to be movement, but you never know is the situation now changes every hour. I don't know how we where we are, but I will try to help the club. But for me, the best thing is that we arrived at the second of September. It's difficult to create collectiveness in this moment and I'm looking forward to finishing the market and this is who we are and build something together.”
Top teams have culled the Cherries in this transfer window. Dean Huijsen is now at Real Madrid, Illia Zabarnyi has switched allegiances to Paris Saint-Germain, Milos Kerkez continues his career at Liverpool, and Kepa Arrizabalaga arrived at **Arsenal**after returning to **Chelsea**from his loan.
**Adrien Truffert**takes the place of Kerkez and impressed against Mohamed Kudus on Saturday. But Bafode Diakité is the only new central defender, and the Basque believes he could do with one more.
“I think in the last day of the market you have to be alert and aware of every opportunity to improve the team. It's true that probably we miss a central defender after signing Bafode. We need one because we've lost Dean, we lost Zabarnyi, so we need another central defender. If not, we still have options.”
David Brooks has been in brilliant form at the start of this season, kicking on in his career after his clearance from cancer. Iraola indicated that the Welshman will not be leaving the club this summer.
*“We are going to keep David Brooks. He has started every game. He is playing very well. It's going to be a strong competition for everyone like in every position but he's an important player for us.”*
‘We have to do it again’
**Bournemouth**are not the biggest of clubs, and they know that their top talent could always attract attention up the food chain. But no matter who is in the squad, Iraola wants an identity to remain.
The manager must now pause his work with the players as national duty takes centre stage again.
“Normally we are competitive sometimes we lose sometimes we win but the team has character and I would like to keep this this this character. We have still a lot work to do in the sense of collectiveness. We need more time together now it's a shame that we lose a lot of players in the international break.”
He has stressed the squad still needs time to mesh together. Apart from all the defenders he has lost this summer, Dango Ouattara became the record signing for **Brentford**for a fee of £42.5 million.
“We have still a lot of work to do, a lot of work. It is not going to be easy. we've lost very important players even Dango, key players that have played almost every game played most of the minutes.”
Amine Adli and **Ben Doak**got their first major minutes for the Cherries in a midweek 2-0 defeat in the second round of the Carabao Cup against Brentford. Every attempt to integrate the players in big games now runs the risk of hurting the team's objectives, but there is no other option available.
“We are in a process of integrating the new signings because we've signed also good players and it's a challenge for me as a manager. It's true we've lost very good players but we have to do it again.”
Growing pains are not new to the manager, who experienced something similar in his first year.
“We are going to go through the same process that we went with Milos, Zaba, because when they started they made mistakes with me and we paid the consequences and they kept improving.”