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By that level of discussion, Jonny Howson wasn't ever prime Jonny Howson either. Morris is a good player. I think people forgot very quickly that he came here from the MLS and for good reason, he settled in a lot quicker than expected. But it's still his first season in the Championship and he's only 23. I can't blame him too much for any predicament we're in when so many of our players are arguably just suffering with this management's imposed malaise. People talk about seeing the hard work and graft on the pitch and this is a lad that does it pretty much every week. I can see him going from strength to strength.

And he was having a laugh and joking about it, not owning up and being apologetic because he's grown or something.

I suppose the problem is that it was something that actually happened, and it disrespected the club, the manager at the time, and his teammates.

There's absolutely no justification for Gibson to foist woodgate on a new manager.

It's not, this season has been really, really *** compared to most previous seasons. Usually teams in the play-offs have a goal difference in the 20s+, or at least pushing 20. Some people will try to spin it as being more competitive, which doesn't really hold up when there are likely to be 2 teams on 100 points and a third team on 91 (93), it's just a lot of underperforming teams. 5th is going to be a maximum of 70 points, which is the lowest ever tally for a 46 game season since the play-offs were introduced. 6th is either going to be the 2nd lowest total of all time, if Millwall and/or Coventry finish 6th with a win, or the lowest ever.

He absolutely would not have a clean slate He's a rat and just about the last person I'd want to see manage Boro

Coventry are good at home. They've won 8 in 10, only losing to Leeds and Burnley. We can't even match mid table sides with nothing to play for. Pressure will be intense and we'll crumble. 4-0, not even trying to be silly, I genuinely think they thump us.

First time getting back on here since the game. So many similarities between the Plymouth game and this one. - Slow tempo - Recycling possession from promising positions - No presence up top - Vulnerable against pace - Slow tempo deserves a second mention It's comfortably the most frustrating Boro side I've ever watched. We're not the underdogs, punching above our weight or outbattling top teams. We're an expensively assembled jumble of underperforming, lightweight plodders just expecting other teams to gift us chances.

Not getting the fuss over Cifuentes (watch this post bite me in the derriere this time next year). I'm not seeing anything special with QPR since his initial new manager honeymoon period. For much the same reason I'm not convinced about Rohl, despite him having Carrick's pants down (lets face it I think most of us on here could do the same). I'm not seeing anything special, with the caveat that I'd rather have him to Carrick because he has shown that he can least adapt his tactics mid game to get a result.

I honestly think they'll be challenging at the top next year. There's a fair few teams that have done well over recent seasons from League 1. Plus they're clearly going to spend although probably breaking rules in doing so.

Bali Mumba would be a no-brainer for RB, you'd think

I think it's more to do with the fact he nearly got us relegated, mate.

Scott was pushing for Hackney to get more first-team involvement. Wilder refused to give him it. He played once for Wilder that season in that much-changed side in the cup in that sticky horrible weather where we lost in the closing stages to Barnsley and the likes of Bilongo, Fletcher and Dodds also made appearances. Other than that he didn't get a minute on the pitch. As soon as Wilder left, Leo pushed him straight into the first team and he started every game barring 2 for the remainder of the season. Scott might not have recruited him but he advocated for him massively to be involved and thought he had a massive future. Think on that what you will but the lad wasn't getting any minutes at all and then suddenly became an ever-present. That doesn't happen from nothing.

I think you're all being unfair to Woodgate here. He'd not been at the club for over 2 years before returning as part of Carrick's coaching, and I think returning to the club where he'd been sacked as manager as a member of the backroom staff is a very humble thing to do. He's become a scapegoat for fans because he's an easy target.

Great memories, favourite time as a fan, favourite players & IMO, our best ever Boro team. Still mss Ayresome Park & yes I still remember the grim times, the flaky stands, sections of the ground cordoned off Stuart Ripley making his Boro debut in front of the then, lowest ever attendance v Oldham 3,477 & 4 days later v Notts County, Alf Duffield standing in the holgate for the lowest home attendance of 3,364, which we lost 1-0 v Notts County, starting out in the boysend late 1971 with my younger brother & our dad standing in the bob end separated by a 4 foot wall. Squeeze please. Boysend, holgate, chicken run those were the day Stan Anderson, to Bryan Robson, some great times, some not so, but growing up AP was the place to be https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/corporate-hospitality-ayresome-park-80s-9054989?ref=BreakingNewsTeesside&utm_medium=facebook

Ends 4-0 and their goal difference has been tanked. Means Bristol City need a win to guarantee their place in the play-offs, as they'll now drop out with a draw if two of Coventry, Millwall and Blackburn win. If they'd managed a draw tonight, a point against Preston would have been enough.

Yeah but with the pace that we have in our team we can hit them on the break 🫠

I don’t get the desperation to write off Hamilton, fine he’s not ready to go right now but by all accounts he’s super talented. Wether it’s a physical issue or mental thing I don’t know but he needs time and support to click into the team and he can prove to be a masterstroke of a signing.

Not surprised, it's a financial black hole as things stand. To even break even you'd have to get promoted and stay there for years while still being fairly conservative with spending.

The apathy has even rubbed off on the Fans as well now and in all my years of supporting Boro I've never experienced anything like it. I saw frustration under Stan Anderson and Lennie Lawrence. I witnessed Robbo's implosion along with Karanka's. Even the Pulis purgatory didn't evoke feelings like those existing now, it's very strange and surreal like.

It puts me in mind of two drunks wildly swinging (and missing) punches at one another and end up rolling about on the ground. If Carrick sticks to his "tried and tested" then we may as well not turn up. It's a final, there is nothing beyond this point unless we win so he may as well go down fighting but I suspect it will another case of going down flailing.

Someone mentioned on the Norwich thread about Giles and SIJ together down the left, I'd be willing to give that a go and move Azaz back central. Just to get a little bit more pace down the flanks. ------------------Travers----------------- Djiksteel - Fry - Howson - Giles -----------Morris--Hackeny---------- Whittaker-------Azaz---------Sam IJ -----------------Conway----------------- It's absolutely tragic that we don't have an alternative to Conway up top, when he's blowing a gasket on 70 mins. Just really poor from the recruitment team.

I’m still not sold on us losing Carrick, I really think he’ll be around next season. 🤦🏼‍♂️

I thought it but didn't want to put it in print although the other 50% of Yanks are probably OK.

So, no chance of it being a Yank then?

That's about it. Seriously though I suspect that what you need in any team is 1/4 of your players like Lenihan: 6-10 full seasons behind them, 300+ games at this level. A bit past their prime but substituting experience for legs. Then another 1/4 with 3-5 seasons behind them; like Fry. Ought to be in their prime. At that sweet spot where they are still at their physical peak but have enough experience to know how to keep consistent levels of performance. Another 1/4 you want to be like Hackney and Sunderland's young crop: 2-3 seasons, 100+ games and fast improving as they approach their prime. Finally a 1/4 who are breaking through or looking to break through. I think this season has been by far the worst since Scott started (unless of course we get promoted.) Just about all our players have stagnated or gone backwards. New signings have either failed or struggled. We've lost nearly all our experience but also failed to develop any young players. No one has come through from the academy and all our players out on loan (except Coburn) have failed. Hardly anything positive except for the bank balance.

mungos mum?

I think it's both. Edmundson is 27 but has very little experience at Championship level and hadn't played more than 20 games a season for the last two seasons. Borges is 28 but has played surprisingly few games in his career just 175 senior games in 8 years; bit of a late developer which shows in how he struggled to adapt here. (He's played more minutes this season than any other season in his career.) Iheanacho is 28 with 240 games in the Premier league, Championship and La Liga over 10 seasons but as we've seen, he's played so little in the last few years that he can't get to any sort of level of performance with us. Believe it or not, Giles is one of our most experienced Championship players with 163 appearances over 6 seasons but like Iheanacho he joined us in the middle of an existential crisis as a footballer. We have tried to bring in experience this season but it's been misjudged. I think it's not just age it's age and experience at this level and where in a player's career they are. I suspect that after three full years in the Championship with over 100 games you are probably experienced with the league which is where Sunderlands young players are along with Hackney and to a lesser extent Rav. Once you hit 200 games and 5+ seasons you probably know everything about how to keep your levels consistent because it was doing that that gave you longevity. It's that level of experience that we have crucially lacked this season.

I've resigned myself to writing us off next weekend, so considering we'll be gearing up for another season in the Championship I think there are a few players in League One that look ready made to make a step up to Top end Championship football and potentially beyond. I've tried to discount players from a couple clubs, like Birmingham and Wrexham as I think they'll like be unattainable in terms of cost. With that in mind I am a little unsure how feasible the potential costs would be for the few I have picked out, but I think given our financial model in recent times (and the likely player outgoings to come this summer), I think they'll all be within our budget. Oliver Casey (Centre Back), would be a great addition to our defensive options, played consistently this season (over 40 games) which is often taken for granted. Fry and Lenihan's (recent) injury record highlight this. Albie Morgan (Centre Mid) his Blackpool team mate, Morgan would really compliment our current midfield, then if we consider Hackney is going to attract interest, I think he could potentially go some way to replacing his output. Both have contracts that expire next season, but there is an option to extend on both. Kayne Ramsay (Right Back) raiding Dijksteel's old club seems a natural fit for our issues on the right hand side. I'd be inclined to give Dijksteel an extension at reasonable terms - if he truly is one of our top earners. Even if we keep Dijksteel we'll still need another right back as I'd be shocked if Ayling gets anywhere close to the form he showed in his initial loan spell with us. Kwame Poku (Right Winger) at Peterborough. I know we signed Whittaker to be the long term Doak replacement, but I'd seriously be exploring signing Poku. We also have Forss, but I think he'll likely move on in the summer. Poku is a free agent this summer, they'll be a lot of competition and they'll be a compensation fee to consider. Richard Kone (Striker) at Wycombe, his goal record speaks for itself, I think he'd be a cracking option to have in the squad. I don't see him as a Conway/Latte Lath replacement like for like but he definitely has similarities and we definitely need another frontline striker going into next season. Apparently Luton had a bid of around £6m rejected last transfer window. We'd still have a few areas of the pitch to address if we managed to get all of the above.

The fact that dijksteel is that high up when Carrick has shown that he has no belief in him as a player over his first season and a half at the club is a great indicator of our complete failure in the transfer market.

Who do you think started it? ✊

Aye I think so too. Put it this way, I think Morris would look a reasonable replacement for Adam Clayton in Karanka's team. But if you put 2015/2016 Clayton in this Middlesbrough side then he'd struggle just as much as Morris has done at times. We saw how swiftly the tactics destroyed one of the Championship's best midfielders at the time as soon as Garry Monk came in and asked him to sit in the middle of the back 2. There's got to be a balance that gets the best out of Morris at both ends of the pitch.

I would be happy with a 3 in midfield but it wont happen with carrick. As for being the best player in the last month i cant agree i think he's been very poor. For example he completely vanished second half against sheff wed when the game got stretched and we needed him most, which is the worst thing you can say about a defensive anchorman he should be grabbing the game by the throat. He's no prime Johnny howson that's for sure let alone a George boateng.

This day 28th April 1973 Boro's final game of the season seen one of our biggest iconic legends, John Hickton, score his 5th & final hat trick for the mighty Boro, scoring all the goals in a 3-2 home win over Orient According to my stats, he was the 39th different Boro player to score a hat trick, our 78th home HT, 74th at Ayresome Park & 105th in total since becoming a football league club, he is also one of 16 different Boro players to score 4 goals in one game, which has happened 30 times In a seasaw of a game, Boro went one nil up, then we found ourselves trailing 2-1 & looking as if the season was going to end with a home defeat, until a late burst from King John, to end the season on a high & two points in the bag, finishing the season in 4th position, with only the top 2 promoted & long, long before the playoffs were even a pipedream An attendance of 7,939 at the game, I was in the east end seats that day with our Kev, we went in to the boysend those early days, our grandad "Pop", who worked on the gates told us to come & see him at HT & let us go in to the seats behind the goal John Hickton is a true gentleman, was a great Boro servant, an excellent goalscorer & a penalty king for the Boro & forever a Boro legend, one of the best ever Boro signings for me & those early 70's sideburns were class. Boro team. Jim Platt John Craggs Frank Spraggon Nobby Stiles Stuey Boam Willie Maddren Bill Gates David Mills John Hickton David Armstrong Alan Foggon Sub Malcolm Smith. What a team, a bit of tinkering, maybe a couple of players added to make us tick & you never know!

That's been floating round for a good while, with Xabi Alonso taking over at Real Madrid. Absolutely massive job that for a young manager. Be interesting to see how he handles the ego's if that's what happens

Gerrard my lord no

Wow, this day 27th April 2006 What an amazing time to be a Boro fan, against all odds, losing 1-0 from the 1st leg, then finding ourselves 3-0 on the night, it seemed our dreams of a major cup final had gone the same way as our FAC final dreams a few days earlier when an unbelievable, emotional, never to be repeated night, we staged our 2nd "once in a lifetime" 'lightening never strikes twice" moment at the Riverside Long live in the memory of many Boro fans who were lucky to be around back then Listen to Ali's passionate voice, X

Coventry City v Middlesbrough Saturday 3rd May - Coventry Building Society Arena - 12.30pm Sky Sports' Main Event of the day! The Intro To paraphrase from @Downsouth, Welcome to the most important match day thread of season (so far)!! This is the first of hopefully four matches I'm writing up, as we reach the crescendo of Boro's increasingly less likely playoff challenge. The May bank holidays mark the end of the season in the Championship, but which one? The Form Boro won five, drew one and lost one in a run that lasted from 25 Feb to the beginning of this month, but have lost three of the last four games as our playoff push has almost died on its ***. The poor form of the team around them is all that is keeping them in the race, but it has allowed Millwall and Blackburn to gain some momentum also. As we wrap up the 46 game regular season, it's no longer in our own hands in what can only be described as a disappointing campaign. Even if results Coventry started the season in horrific form but, after making the decision to sack Robins and replace him with Frank Lampard, they catapulted themselves into the playoff places and remain in sixth despite stuttering themselves of late. Coventry have also only one one of the last four, losing to relegation threatened Luton and Plymouth in their last two fixtures. Coventry have only took 10 points from the last 30 available, and it's safe to say the new manager bounce has definitely worn off. Jay Dasilva was sent off in their previous game, and I couldn't find anything about them appealing the red card as of yet, so as of this moment he is unavailable for our game The Lineup *Insert shrug gif here* The back five may remain unchanged for once in a blue moon. We know Lenihan isn't back despite appearing on the bench, but I'm not 100% sure how long Rav is meant to be out for, so I imagine Howson and Fry start between SiJ and Dijksteel. Morris and Hackney to continue in midfield I imagine. The big questions remain up front - Since ELL left, Carrick has struggled to settle on a front four. Nacho doesn't seem a good fit for our tactics when played in the 10, and it forces Azaz and Whittaker into positions where they aren't great. Burgzorg, who was showing a bit of desire and seemed to have hit a bit of form, has been dropped completely or played on the right where he is ineffective. We also have Forss appearing regularly again but due to the upheaval there's no cohesion and it's not gonna magically appear. Travers Dijksteel Howson Fry SiJ Hackney Morris Forss Whittaker Azaz Conway The View From The Otherside https://www.skybluestalk.co.uk/threads/coventry-city-middlesbrough-match-thread-saturday-3rd-may.168378/ The Playoff Picture As it stands, Boro are 9th, but with the best goal difference of the 5 teams fighting for the last two playoff spots. The other matches are: Bristol City v Preston Burnley v Millwall Sheffield United v Blackburn. Boro need to beat Coventry and hope two of the other teams drop points. Draws would be enough to overtake Millwall and Blackburn on Goal Difference, but we'd need Bristol City to lose if we were going to overtake them too. Fifth place gets Sunderland, sixth gets Sheffield United. Come on Boro!!!

What can we do differently? Turn up.

Maybe they're happy to keep hold of their money. Very sensible! 😆

I've felt despondent plenty of times as a Boro fan, but never this angry.

The Riverside has always been a cross between Lego and Subbutio.Just another identity kit stadium. AP when full had a different atmosphere. A lot more standing for a start. The approach to Ayresome was through terraced streets or along Linthorpe Road. The Riverside is basically in unkempt wasteland the wrong side of the railway.The whole area is depressing. Some of the newer stadiums are really impressive.Cant day that about the Riverside.

It's a very poor league and we are capable of beating Coventry if the mentality is right. Trouble is Carrick is neither inspiring or charismatic. It's rubbed off on the players. They have no sense of urgency.

UK's largest cable supplier. Turnover half a billion a year.

So it's a problem having young players but also old players and it's a problem having experienced players and also inexperienced players? Got it 😉

Google is getting shocking for just putting incorrect information on their front page now. It has him as 29 right now, and the date has definitely changed since I looked this morning, it had it as June, now it's saying his birthday was yesterday. But it's actually 24th of June 1996. It's giving incorrect scores for matches all the time too lately.

downing was in that boot room, downing it is then that way woody can stay on lol

You could play Howson, Hackney and Morris in a 433 No way is Morris getting dropped, he's been our best player for the last month. Carrick needs to change the system to accommodate the players we have available and who are in form. Something he refuses to do !!!

How on earth does Scott get credit for Hackney. You may as well credit him with signing Juninho in that case 🤷‍♂️

Humpty said something a few months ago to that affect so I wouldn’t be surprised. The way I see it is I doubt the club is ‘up for sale’ but maybe he’s more willing to listen to proposals than before, maybe he’s told some one to ‘put the feelers out’ to potential buyers. So I wouldn’t say he’s actively looking to sell/get out, more waiting for the person he thinks is the right match.