LinoJo3

How much of that was down to poor signings though? I mean even in our promotion season we were desperate for wide players, striker and a #10, we ended up with downing, nugent and fabrinni, I’m not going to pretend I was disappointed to sign downing at the time, but for the big promotion push season nugent and fabrinni were massively underwhelming for me. karankas system needed standout attackers to make the attacking part work as they were left to do a lot on their own. Even forest looked a bit more open going forward with lolly and those 2 Portuguese players they brought in. While karanka was overly cautious I think most of that was down to almost a paranoia that our attackers wernt good enough. The melt down after January tells me the story, his plan was clearly just to keep us out of the bottom 3 until we could get some forwards in, we messed that up and he cracked.

I realised this summer that it wasn’t pulis who sucked away any enthusiasm I had for boro but Gibson himself. I just can’t get excited about it any more, you know the promises are empty and any big decisions will be poor, sometimes you’d swear he’s doing it on purpose.

I’ve given up with our midfield, I always think back to the wba/sheff Utd home games of last season, howson and Wing absolutely dominated, aggressively pressing the ball, winning it high up the pitch and driving forward, Clayton sat in behind and mopped up anything that got passed. It was the best I’d seen is play for ages, then we had an international break and that was that. Now I’m not really sure what any of them do/want to do other than Clayton. Howson, Wing and Tav have all turned into ‘floaters’, just generally floating around the midfield area not really defending and not really attacking. Out of those 3 I honestly couldn’t tell you their best position other than ‘CM’. Our midfield has no drive, no sense of urgency or aggression, it’s receive the ball and pass it on, receive the ball and pass it on. Basic, predictable stuff, it neither creates anything or destroys opposition attacks. Possibly the most ‘meh’ midfield I’ve seen from us since the days of Isiah osbourne and Kevin Thomson.

I agree 352 is the best way for us, but you made the same mistake as me and forgot about McNair in midfield haha.

I don’t think media outlets would care tbh

We have better players than Barnsley, seeing that he picked Barnsley up off the floor and got them promoted suggests (to me) good man management to get the best out of the team.

He’s got something about him, built Barnsley back up and gave them and the fans a new lease of life. He’s available, he would be cheap and would jump at the chance to come here. Not getting him would be a mistake imo.

Today has answered your question tbh, get Daniel Stendel in immediately

Ah look here’s Wilson again, font of all footballing knowledge, sees what others don’t and will even tell you what you’re thinking. I’m guessing I’m one of them with ‘warped thinking’ because I dared to disagree that we are apparently ‘making progress’, now I’ve been enlightened that my desire is to go back to unattractive football, well that’s news to me tbh. How very condescending of you, but please continue to tell us all what we want and how we’re thinking, keep us on the right path and guide us to the light of our improvements.

352 howson and Coulson (Johnson till fit) Wing backs Dani, Fry and Friend CB Wing, Dijksteel (worth a try) and Tavernier CM Britt and Fletcher up front

Yes because I’m so stupid I’m basing my whole Opinion of woodgate and Gibson on our league position, I’m so stupid I base my opinion of the long term on a game by game basis.... There is no slow progress, there is no actual progress, I don’t see us playing any kind of football in any kind of pattern in any kind of shape with any kind of plan. As I said if there was a platform you could see or something to get hold of where you could see us building off it I’d have a totally different opinion. The bare truth is we are shocking, backed up by our performances on the pitch and any stat you want to look at.

I say ‘imaginary improvements’ because I just can’t see the stuff you get excited about, it’s all confirmation bias rather than real world. I think everyone needs to go back to baseline when it comes to opinions on the club now, forget pulis, forget styles of play etc. If you concentrate on the here and now and look at our performances I can’t see any other conclusion than down right awful. Our midfield looks terrible, it neither creates or destroys, full backs are even worse, we have no functioning wide players and wether he’s a good player or lazy lump, Britt doesn’t stand much chance of doing anything in this team. The energy levels are none existent, we have debates on what shape we’re trying to play, we are incredibly weak stopping or defending anything put into the box wether a cross or set piece. And most worryingly of all we’ve gone down the worst path in football of bad defending and a low goal return. What exactly am I supposed to be looking at in these games to see this magical ray of hope telling me in time everything will be golden? Yes I was one of them who wanted to see better football, but why did we fall into a trap of thinking that would come simply by employing a guy who says he will play good football? To give someone time and not talking about sackings you have to employ someone who gives you some kind of confidence, a platform you know you can build off, you seem to be willing to give woodgate time just for the sake of not sacking him, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Heres my opinion, we have failed yet again to appoint the right manager to over see these ‘changes’ and failed yet again to address problem areas of the squad. None of my recent posts have been aimed at woodgate they are aimed at the top, either Gibson changes how he runs the club, gets someone in who knows how to run a club, or just sell up. We are going nowhere but down as it stands.

Give me one thing to be optimistic about then?

It’s not ‘brilliant’ he’s gone for the standard ‘your impatient and only want success now or sack the lot’ route. He keeps almost talking down to those who aren’t happy with woodgate and churning out these imaginary ‘improvements’ he can apparently see, yet nobody else can. We’re clearly getting worse, we can’t break teams down, our passing is so redictable and slow and we’ve lost the one good thing we had which was our tight defence. For me to have patience I needed to see some obvious improvement by now, we’re still the same as we were in August and it’s not going to get any better.

Same I don’t think we ever seemed to play football like other bigger budget teams, our passing for years has always seemed a bit ragged, a bit laboured, never really that fluid, I’ve never sat there and been impressed at us zipping the ball around, countering at pace or putting together multiple good moves per game. Even under karanka we were like that mostly but at least back then we dictated and controlled almost every home game. I always remember when we played against Blackpool the season they went up, they played the quickest one touch football I’d seen for ages, absolutely tore us apart and I was just sat there wishing we could play like that. I had that down as the single most impressive away performance I could remember until we got promoted and played liverpool!