Leaderboard

Good win tonight. Challenge now is to carry it on and find some consistency - something that has eluded Neil so far. As far as I’m aware, we only managed to win 3 games in a row once last season and were stupidly inconsistent from January onwards. I won’t be holding my breath but hope to be proven wrong utfb

I hope you applauded him during his warm up as the Boro legend that he is.

Reading Sheff Utd's forum they seem to think Adlène Guedioura would have been the answer tonight. Really?  REALLY?

Oh and one other thing I picked up on tonight, I don't know if anyone else saw it. But Payero looks so done. When he was coming out to warm up he looked completely unenthusiastic. I know some players just don't do that much but he wasn't even doing anything really, just sat watching the game. At half time, he came out to do the warm ups with Jepson and again looked defeated. His body language was that of a broken man. At one point, he stopped before doing his last sprint just to hit a nearby ball towards goal seemingly for the sake of kicking a ball. Then he completely disappeared. The other lads stayed out pretty much until the teams came out, just passing the balls about. Payero walked off and only appeared again just before the end of half time. Maybe it was a nature calls moment? Or maybe he genuinely is broken? It might be nothing but he just looked lonely and defeated, it was really sad.

Don't scream and shout about it but we actually played well tonight. Bamba was a clear man of the match, Lumley also played very well for the 2nd game running. And if you have to say it... the midfield worked. Of course, it helps when they're getting on the ball and able to play. All 3 of our midfielders tonight had a similar number of touches, similar number of passes. Compare that to the weekend when Crooks and Payero had nowt of the game because we didn't even bother involving them. We didn't have a great deal of possession compared to them as you'd expect, they're one of those fancy passing sides that @Blancocan't stand. They move the ball a lot, they try to pass quick and often, round the corner, between the gaps. Their problem wasn't getting to our box or around it though, they had enough chances to score. It was that when they did, they either couldn't finish or Bamba/Lumley made a block/save. This probably saves Warnock's job for the foreseeable. I felt very odd about that given the week we've had, winning didn't feel as good to me and I'm not usually like that at the game. A win is always a positive thing and I should have been celebrating with a little more conviction but part of me had royally had enough and was willing to accept a loss tonight to see if it would allow us to move on.