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We have clearly progressed this season. By the end of this season we will have scored more goals, won more matches and accumulated more points that last season. There has been no hint of a relegation battle and until recently we had a chance of promotion via the play offs. If that’s not progress from a relegation battle then I don’t know what is progress. I think you could fairly argue that it hasn’t been enough progress, that this squad should be doing better or that the football is far from entertaining but I really struggle to see how there has been no progress.

I wouldn't normally say this, but with Boro in their current state, he should have given the girl a chance. Teenage romance being what it is, he'd probably have been done and dusted in time for pre-season. 😁

I seem to remember that the last time we had a long term vision was in the Robson era when they built the training facilities and talked about strengthening the academy so we could develop our own talent. We sort of also had a long term vision under McLaren but that was just "spend beyond our means" and that was dropped from one season to the other starting the long decline. We revived that a bit under AK but then went full retard from january in the prem. And you should never go full retard. Since then we've been appalingly run but I suppose we can count ourselves lucky that we are not in the

My son (16 yes old) got his first proper girlfriend. I asked how it’s going and he replied “She complained about me playing football each Saturday morning then watching Boro in the afternoon and something had to give” What ya going to do I said I’ll miss her a little bit I suppose was his answer 😂😂😂

Nathan Wood back in the Crewe starting line-up, they managed a very credible 0-0 draw against Portsmouth. Hopefully he played well in the match and gets a run of starts till the end of the season.

Problem is, whilst finishing higher than last season represents progress from that, in the long-term, it still represents a downward trend since relegation. Woodgate didn't destroy our squad, he didn't destroy our club, he was a poor inexperienced coach who took a team who had been finishing in the top third of the division and nearly took it down. Warnock came in last year and he relatively comfortably managed to get us avoiding relegation in the end because he's a competent, experienced manager. With quite a similar squad this year, we're still on a downward trend from where Pulis left

Got stuff to deal with outside of football I suspect. Needs to try and sort that side of things out, although it's easier said than done.

Turn up on time. Simple as. I'm not seeing any evidence they're improving any of our players at the moment. In many respects, we've regressed. Abysmal as a Pulis team was to watch, the defence was usually obdurate. Now, we're toothless up front, ineffectual in midfield, shaky in defence and incompetent in goal. I honestly can't work out if Warnock keeping us up last season was a fluke, or if something's badly rotten behind the scenes this season. He's certainly made glaring mistakes, like giving Britt the captain's armband when the man couldn't organise the crew on the Marie Celest

Oh yeah, I think Stoj pretty much always gets distance on his punches which is super important if you do decide to go that route. I'd prefer a keeper who can catch the ball in those situations but beggars can't be choosers!

At least Stoj can actually punch the ball, Bettinelli can't even do that properly half the time!

Really want Bayern to score to see Neymar cry 🤞

The Woodgate appointment was a strange one. I would like to say it was the right idea but the wrong man - but I don’t believe that the golden thread etc was actually an idea or a philosophy that existed before his appointment but rather spin that occurred afterwards. I am sure Gibson looked at the quality of the squad and thought at worst we would be mid table and if things went well we would be around the play offs and playing football the fans wanted to see. I do think Woodgate vastly under performed. The squad wasn’t dissimilar to the Pulis one and certainly had the better playe

Saturday 17th April needs to include games moved to early kick offs due to the change in fixture times for funeral.

Fair enough. Maybe progress is the wrong word to use because when you compare this season with last season directly there have been improvements in certain metrics. However, we've finished below 12th at this level just twice since 1990 and last season was one of those seasons. And I think everyone will agree that the squad we had was much better than that and that we should never have been in that position to begin with. From the point of view of our goals - to get promoted - were still almost as many points behind where we need to be as we were in one of our 2 worst seasons in 30

Stanislas is probably on as much if not more than Assombalonga is. Even assuming that wages across the board will decrease after this past year, I'd be surprised if we're willing to get close to that for new signings.

Wow I’ve just seen on SSN that Marcus Maddison is quitting football because he’s fallen out of love

Gazette have published a list of all Champo players out of contract this summer. Any names that interest anyone? I'd look at: GK: Asmir Begovic (aged 33, Bournemouth) Keiren Westwood (aged 36, Sheffield Wednesday) Joe Lumley (aged 26, QPR) CB: Sonny Bradley (aged 29, Luton) Joost van Aken (aged 26, Sheffield Wednesday) (this one is just on name alone I know nothing about him) Christian Kabasele (aged 30, Watford) Steve Cook (aged 29, Bournemouth) Michael Morrison (aged 32, Reading) CM: Mario Vrancic (aged 31, Norwich) Billy Mitchell (aged 19, Millwall) (if th

That has to be at least part of the problem, but communication is a 2-way thing and the Barnsley game had a classic example of the lack of it, between keeper & defence. Namely when Hall let Dike past him and Bettinelli ended up doing that high kick to try and clear the ball, caught Dike and was lucky not to be booked or even sent off. Which goes back to my earlier question of what the coaching staff actually do to earn their pay.

Calm, reassured and a good shot stopper. That be the type of keeper like Dimi to give the defence confidence again I am convinced Betenelli is the reason the defence has gone to pot as nobody has confidence in him.

Glad it’s not Ched Evans... but let’s be honest, if Warnock is doing the picking, then it will most definitely be some alternative cart horse for us to boot the ball long to.

Genuinely relieved.

A very good article on Stuart Webber. He's completely out of our league but we have desperately needed someone like him for well over a decade. Whenever Warnock leaves we need to have a complete restructure by appointing someone like Webber to transition us into an efficient, forward-thinking club: https://www.edp24.co.uk/sport/norwich-city/stuart-webber-norwich-city-four-year-anniversary-7875060

Thank f**k for that.

Putting aside his off the field issues we don’t need another non scoring striker.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/56718446 Puts that link to bed. Ched Evans signed a new deal at PNE.

Yep I'm with you - catch first, but if you are gonna punch, at least actually clear it! Not whatever the *** it is that Bettinelli does any time he goes under a cross.

I was two vertebrae away from being happily single forever. It would have just been me, my guitar, football and a bottle of Listerine.

the difference between stoj and betti is clear. one is good at nothing and really weak at shotstopping(he goes down in stages) the other punches crosses and actually saves shots near him.

I have to admit, based on his acquisitions to date, I wouldn't be giving him a large transfer kitty to play with, even if I could afford it. Plus there's the whole, "surely he's gonna retire soon" angle. In fairness to Warnock, there can't be many chairmen who would let him splash the cash, based purely on his age. Also, Boro have never been the most attractive club for higher quality players and we usually have to pay over the odds in fee and wages to get them. The list of players we can afford and who actually want to sign for us is usually fairly short. But as folks on here have b

Never going to get a better chance to watch every single match in a season.

There is no doubt in my mind that if Stoj had been in goal instead of Bettinelli this season, we'd be in the playoff spots. And this is coming from someone who was really quite harsh on him before he went.

You're not the only one. I've said since the beginning that Dejan has been shafted by the fact that he doesn't speak fluent English. Having watched Bettinelli for the year I'm fairly confident Dejan would have been a huge upgrade.

Am I the only one who is concerned that Stojanovic is only being let down by the fact that he isn't English? Warnock has gone on about wanting to "buy English" and "players who know the league" (because obviously, who wants to sign someone like Pukki or Buendia?). Very worrying, because there's no chance in hell anyone looked at Stojanovic, Bettinelli, and Archer and said Stojanovic was the one who needed to go based on performance and talent.

If anyone wants to read how Dejan has been getting on during his loan spell read this. I'd like to think he gets a chance to impress Warnock again.

Still a bit concerned we never heard a conclusion to the saga that was running in the background with Randolph and his ex-partner, that seemed to get swept under the rug a bit. Even ignoring that, I doubt we could afford his wages and I imagine we'd end up paying a similar fee to what we bought and then sold him for too.

Didn’t it all end in a bit of a mess?

I'm pretty sure no-one can explain VAR. As we know from the Championship, refereeing decisions can be bizarre even without it. 🤷‍♂️

Nice assassination piece by the Gazette there (with Gibbo's blessing, no doubt.) Still expect Bettinelli to start against QPR though, as Warnock will never, ever admit he's got it wrong.

West Ham being linked with Dieng the QPR goalkeeper. If he goes there that would push Randolph down to 3rd choice. Would people go back for Randolph or is it a case of move on? I am personally in the former camp and would love him back.

I have been saying that for months. With the loans and contracts ending we are well short of numbers. Bett and Archer are leaving so that’s at least 2 keepers are required. Brynn may step up but will probably go on loan or replace stoj We then may have to replace Johnson, Bolasie, Kebano, NML, Fletcher and Britt. Thats 8 players and even then it doesn’t address that we need cover at left back and centre back. So that’s 10 players we need. Then we will start thinking about selling Saville and/or Spence (Wing and Coulson going probably don’t make no difference).

VAR was brought in to improve the game its been nothing but a hinderance and an absolute farce, players getting ruled offside for not even interfering with play, I'd sooner just go back to goal line technology and the ref and assistants making the rest of the decisions rightly or wrongly.

Agree with all that, we should be looking at him, but I to also have concerns about the lack of gametime. Pretty sure in the Wolves promotion season he looked fairly solid, I know he was behind a very good defence, but I don't recall him costing Wolves any points due to errors. There is a big part of me that thinks we should give Stojanovic a crack at being No.1, then if he's not upto it, we have someone in the ilk of Ruddy waiting to step in. It would seem a waste of wages/transfer fee if we just bomb Stojanovic out without much of a chance, especially considering how well the other Wood

Wouldn't need a professional writer to carry out that task. My 6 year old nephew however has mastered his own name, he should be free...

He’s looking for someone to put together a biography of his wittiness on oneBoro

Thanks for going in to the detail to explain why it is as good as having the funds in the bank 👍

I don't think it matters too much when we got the funds tbh mate. IIRC at the time, the deal was up to £10m with about £7m of that confirmed to be coming in at some stage and around £3m of add-ons. None of that money came in immediately IIRC but we always knew at least £7m was coming in at some point. So whilst we wouldn't have been able to immediately give Millwall £7m for Saville direct from the Bamford fee, we did have freedom to negotiate spending £7m knowing full well we'd end up with the money from Bamford at some stage. The only thing the delayed transaction might have hindered us

We like as not didn't pay cash up front for Saville, most deals are structured over a multitude of different arrangements but the point is we were supposedly skint and on the bones of our backside so we sold Bamford for a rumoured £7m (it was undisclosed) yet brought Saville in four weeks later for a similar amount of that commonly touted as the amount we received for Bamford.

That’s purely an accounting practise issue. The sale is recorded and is as good as having the funds in the bank.

Whilst there is no doubt there is some truth in all that Pulis refused to play Bamford until he had to and then it was Bamford's goals that got us into the play offs. Bamford got concussed just before them after landing on his back in a game and was taken to the hospital as a precaution, he returned to the Riverside quickly the same afternoon seemingly without serious after effects. He was then seemingly dispensed with by Pulis who instead reverted to his non scoring strikers and those two spineless games against Villa saw Bamford ignored with even an injured Gestede preferred. A chance t