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Game Details: Venue: John Smith Stadium (or if your prefer Kirklees Stadium) Huddersfield Date: Saturday 28th November 2020 Kick off: 1500hrs or 3pm f you do not understand the 24 hour clock. Introduction Well welcome everyone to the second DS Match Day thread in less than 4 days but not as impomptu as my last (and may I say decent effort). Boro fresh from a very fine win against Waynes World last night take the show on the road and travel to Huddersfield where I hope we can terrorise "The Terriers" who achieved a goalless draw against Wycombe Wanderers at Adams Park on Tuesday night. What does Warnock do? Well clearly NW does read the oneBoro forum and obviously thought highly of my recommendation of starting Roberts and Watmore from the off, and with a few tweaks along the way managed a very fine team performance up front as he knows he has a bloody good defensive set up. So lads and lassies if you were in SmogDanes favourite persons shoes how would you set up for this game? Huddersfield Town There recent 6 game form has seen them win once, drawn twice and lose 3 games. Their defence is not the best at keeping the opposition out but they can score goals so should we be concerned? View from the Opposition https://downatthemac.proboards.com/ Looks the most likely to have comments about the game The view from Downsouth. (has anyone worked this out so far?) Whilst I woud love to include my very seldom used phrase it has been a while since we last won away and following last nights win it would be great to follow up with another 3 points so whilst not quite there this game is very important for many reasons. The way we are set up and with a team that actually looks like a team and with quite a few options I really believe we can set about Huddersfield and come away with another victory so basically stick to the Derby formula (barring injuries) and go from there. Would be good to see Morsy back in the squad. Over to you folks I hope that you have enjoyed reading the Opening Post and will wish to contribute and become The Manager you all want to be I thank you😑 ps this deserves more than the 3 likes I got for the Derby OP!😄

Introduction Nearly 9 months after my last matchday thread I have fetched my dusty box of gifs from the loft ready for action. Ironically my last thread was our away trip to Brentford last season which ended in a 3-2 loss. Since then not much has been going on right? Empty stadiums have become the new norm and, dare I say it, seems to be suiting us just fine. Flourishing under Warnock we are unbeaten since the first game of the season filling the fans with a strange and surreal sense of optimism Although there has been one too many draws for the liking of most, epitomised in last nights 0-0 draw with Blackburn which saw a strong defensive performance.. ..and a toothless attack.. Brentford have had an average start to the season, adapting to the loss of key players from their BMW attack that very nearly propelled them to the promised land. They have however splashed the cash on former Boro target Ivan Toney He does guarantee goals though.. The Big Questions Will we see Patrick Roberts feature or are his legs just too fragile? Will our strikers figure out how to score? Or will it all be left to forum favourite George Saville? What do we think the score will be? (Hi Neil if you are reading this, I'm a big fan) Bear out..

It's my birthday today, meant to be my 30th but I've refused to allow that in current circumstances of not being able to celebrate it. I usually get my age on the back of one of my shirts so I received this off my Mam today:

My doodle entry. As Anglian says, hard to get any kind of control with the mouse!

I'm in love with a 71 year old man ❤️ There, I said it!

Snow blind I remember 1986. I did think about a trip to Hartlepool so I could see them one last time as I wasn't expecting them to survive much beyond that game. I'd given up on them, a complete basket case. I was never going to see the Boro again. I presume "brother Gibson" will remember it too and do his best to ensure it doesn't happen again. If promotion has to wait (largely because of this disease), then it has to wait rather than not seeing the Boro again. I presume it is a choice we'd all make.

I present your prize @boro-unger, this highly valuable and prestigious certificate. Please feel free to print off and display proudly in your home. Congratulations!

Played 9, conceded 5 goals, the same as the much vaunted Watford Premiership defence. After last seasons abysmal showing then step forward Neil Warnock and his coaches, what a turnaround, take a bow, you have given us back our sense of pride

One very special moment (This time I didn't cheat)

It is progress. People need to remember where we nearly ended up last season. I can't believe the moaning.

Things we have learned this week: - Boro's younger players aren't rubbish. - Boro's squad is capable of playing good football. - Playing good football doesn't lead to you conceding 5 goals a game. - People prefer us playing good football. - I am always right.

Oh, Stewart Downing Used to play for the Boro Now at Blackburn, slow

Finally! Nothing to dislike about that whatsoever given what's available. Just hope we win with a good performance now so we don't go back to the same old at the weekend!

Every time I watch Leeds I get sad at the thought of the Harrison Bamford traore trio that we never really got to see despite having them - what an absolute waste of that squad it was giving pulis the reigns.

It's funny isn't it? Fry is playing well, McNair is brilliant apparently and Dijksteel is a 'beast'. And yet we can't possibly risk playing attacking players in attacking positions ahead of them? Instead we have to have layers of protection in front of them and lots of people don't see that as the central issue 🙂

I can't understand how anyone can sit there and say this is the same as Pulis. It is closer to what we saw under Karanka though I still wouldn't say it's really the same. It really goes to show just how pathetic Pulis' brand of defending is, there's very little thought that goes into it, it's just "More men in defence and midfield means less goals conceded." Any two-bit manager could defend like that and it didn't even keep us clean sheets, Randolph still had to work hard to keep the ball out the goal. Even worse, it made us terrible at attacking and scoring goals because nobody was ever in the right positions at the top end of the pitch. The higher up the pitch you can defend the more likely you are to have those players still in the right positions when you receive the ball. That's rarely something we saw under Pulis. Make no mistake, when it comes to defense vs. attack, clearly our first concern under Warnock is not conceding and losing games. But execution of not conceding goals is heavily intertwined with scoring them at the other end in the modern game, where you defend and how conservative or aggressive you do it is something that puts Warnock and Pulis in different brackets of a defensive coach.

Boro have conceded 5 goals this season. The least in the top 4 divisions in England

I am the victor because I said I am. As the world has gone absolute crazy I’m going for a BORO 5-0 win.. if we don’t win by 5 I am demanding a goal recount until the score line shows we did.....

Well done to the manager for realising it. Excellent management. Colback was in the refs ear big style to get Morsy sent off the ginger geordie ***.

After retiring to my mood room to consider the various artworks submitted to me, I have decided that this entry by @boro-unger wins the doodle competition. Congratulations, it was pregnant Phillipe Albert which ultimately won it for you! Thank you to everyone who took part! It was very entertaining looking at your wonderful efforts!

This is my drawing that I gone and done of Neil Warnock lifting the Championship trophy at the riverside. I'm not very good at bodies but think the face has a good likeness: Going for 1-1 with Britt scoring against his old club for this one.

That’s because it happened 10 minutes before you actually witnessed it.

Oh dear mate. I have some bad news to tell you about Friend 🙁

Promotion did not nearly finish this club. Stupid reckless spending after relegation nearly finished this club.

Oh and what an absolute embarrassment Derby County are, they've bent every rule in thr book to get a financial advantage, getting a sponsor to pay Rooney 60k a week, no manager and they sit rock bottom of the league. A joke of a club and I hope they go down.

Reading through the Derby forum atm. To say they're not Wayne Rooney fans would be...putting it mildly.

This is immensely satisfying given all that's gone on between the clubs recently.

Nah, he's just ginger

Have been reliably informed that a vow of celibacy is not stipulated in contract (not sure about tonsure though)

With the international break giving us time to breathe, we've had a look at the emergence of Anfernee Dijksteel and Marc Bola in the Boro defence. The diamonds in the rough are finally shining. https://erimusfootball.com/2020/11/12/diamonds-in-the-rough/

well if that's not an appropriate and fitting end to 2020, I don't know what is.

People of colour is frowned upon as well I believe. I just call all men gadge and all women sexybum to avoid any issues of offending anyone 👍

Will be interesting to see how this lad progresses. Has made huge strides in a short space of time.

My granded grew up with Mannion at South Bank St Peter's. They used to play in the same position and unfortunately my grandad wasn't quite the same standard as Wilf. My grandad said Wilf would often feign injury to allow my grandad to play.

Just to touch on the 6 draws or 2 wins/4 losses arguement. If someone says 6 draws, you cant then turn around and say but what if you took a risk and got more points from the 4 losses - thats not how it works! The underlying facet of this question is not how the points are earned but rather who they are earned AND LOST against. We have seen the damage that can be caused when losing to teams around you (didnt we lost to Bournmouth and Watford in a week when chasing top 2 under AK?) so a point at least would have been NW priority out of this game, not just to keep out points ticking over but also to limit Brentford to 1 gained. I was happy with the point before, I am happy with the point after. Regardless of whether people thought we could have flipped the coin and gone for the win, NW remained focussed on his minimum and achieved it. I was never a fan of him before he came to us but the transformation has been unbelieveable and arguing about whether we should have got 6 points away to Blackburn and Brentford is much better than hoping teams below us get points deductions and more of Charltons players refuse to play on. Roberts not even featuring is weird, and as we have seen in recent times with Bamford and Harrison, just because they dont play here doesnt mean they arent good enough - its just at the time their qualities seemingly werent what the manager was looking for. Even Traore took a while to get starts and win most of us over as we thought he was too much of a risk with minimal end product.

So you’d rather draw 3-3 then win 1-0? When I watch footy on TV, it’s for entertainment, but when it comes to my own team I couldn’t give a toss about entertainment. Results no matter the cost.

Before most of the games we've played, most of the unhappy posters have expressed their belief in a worse result than we've actually got, then complained when we have done better than they thought we would. We all know it isn't pretty but it is still 100% better than last year and virtually every player has shown a willingness to work for a result. Maybe I am old-fashioned for thinking supporters should praise the team more than criticise it but some just seem to be obsessed with nit-picking their way through a game. Nobody played badly, some played better than others. The Norwich game will probably be pretty similar to this, but after that we have a run of games where we will be regarded as favourite to win till the end of the year, apart from Swansea and that is when we might see a bit more adventurous play. Everyone has the right to criticise but every now and then, point out something we have done well. I would like to see more exciting goalfests, but this season, the teams are so evenly matched that keeping a decent goal difference could be the difference between success and failure.

Sometimes I do think fans suffer from revisionism. We remember the good stuff in retrospect and forget a lot of the bad. In our amazing 2006, the football was so bad at times, a fan ended up throwing his season ticket at the manager. There were times under Karanka where we couldn’t seem to buy a goal, and when half the team and manager seemed to be at war with one another. I’m enjoying seeing the team spirit under Warnock, long may the improvement continue.

Definitely one of the best 45 mins I’ve seen in 3 or 4 years.

Hell no she disappeared when the circus left town. When the light creeped through the plywood on the windows it would scare me because her glass eye would shine green.

Not really. Other than last season, our last four seasons in the Championship we've finished 4th, 2nd, 5th and 7th. I just don't get the mindset that we shouldn't be up there.

Where is our young centre back? There are too many forest players in the way... I can't see the wood for the trees!

Dimi Constant-Sarcophagus

Assombalonga could be Cousin Britt

Seen the same thing a million times before now, franks, Park, Walker (2009), grounds, luke Williams, Smallwood. Give them a chance, you can’t loan him out he can ‘do a job’, they need time to develop, best player from our academy in years, looks great in the u23s. Sorry but 95% of the time you can tell a mile off if an academy player will make the step up. Walker last season looked WAY off the pace, compare him to tav and Nathan wood who looked like they’d been in and around the first team for a season or 2. Yes Walker might come good after a loan spell, he needs it tbf to him. The point is would he improve our team or add something we don’t have? No he’d literally just be a ‘body’ in the squad, the best thing for the club and him as a player was to go on loan. I get that we all want our academy players to make it here but we have to accept that the majority of them won’t.

If he’s going by plane, he’ll probably miss it.