ANDONI Iraola admits it is “difficult” to do too much work on Cherries’ upcoming fixture against Everton, with so few players at the training ground.

Cherries are currently in the middle of a 17-day gap in fixtures, since beating Luton Town 4-3 on March 13.

They return to action at home against Sean Dyche’s Toffees on Saturday, but currently have 10 members of the first-team squad away representing their countries.

Asked what the focus has been with the smaller group of players, Iraola said: “We have to prepare for another difficult week where we have three games in a short period.

“The difficult part is right now we are training with only nine or 10 players.

“So we have a lot of time, but really you have to prepare the game with the team in just two sessions, after everyone has played with their international teams.

“We focus more on individual stuff, things we can correct from the players and keep the physical levels obviously.

“We try to give them the most training we can, without risking any injury or any problem we could have.

“But we cannot work a lot on the collective side.

“We cannot start watching Everton videos. It doesn’t make sense, because we need to do it again when the rest of the team comes.”

Asked how nice it is as a coach to have more one-on-one training time during periods such as this, Iraola added: “It is good because we can go much more into detail with everyone.

“We have Adam Smith and Max Aarons training with us, so you can just sometimes focus on the things that are very concrete and very detailed from their position.

“You can do the drills focused on what the full-backs need, so we can provide some help.

“It is good, but you have to also be careful, because sometimes when you only have seven or eight players, you want to train a lot and then they get injured, so you have to manage a lot of things.”