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Fair enough, if I had to have a grumble about the modern game the fans would be a long way down my list. I am losing interest with watching top level football nowadays it's just 90 minutes of non-stop cheating. The annoying thing is it could be stamped out within a season with retrospective bans. I also hate how much influence money has the game. Basically the rich teams win and everyone is making up the numbers. For us it feels like the best we can ever hope for is to get promoted and have a decade of mid table football, it's depressing. I watch the NFL where they have a salary c

Some have lived through it, another 15k deserted the club during that time!

Fair enough, if I had to have a grumble about the modern game the fans would be a long way down my list. I am losing interest with watching top level football nowadays it's just 90 minutes of non-stop cheating. The annoying thing is it could be stamped out within a season with retrospective bans. I also hate how much influence money has the game. Basically the rich teams win and everyone is making up the numbers. For us it feels like the best we can ever hope for is to get promoted and have a decade of mid table football, it's depressing. I watch the NFL where they have a salary c

Maybe some of the moaners did actually go to Ayresome park, everyone has this glowy eyed nostalgia that everything was better in their day. I've been in the old South stand at Ayresome park where certain Boro players were getting barracked for 90 minutes. I've seen the Holgate so empty that groups of kids were having a kick about in it. I've seen blokes getting their heads kicked in outside the ground and fighting inside the ground. Things were not always better in the good old days, my dad said that the old blokes in the 60s were the same calling Best, Law and Charlton overrated and

Randolph needs to come and claim everything 8 yards from his goal line. That means the defence are switched on when it comes to Randolph getting blocked. Flint is a monser in the air. Difficult to deal with for any team. Randolph is the best chance for us dealing with that. It is also imperative that we don't give silly free kicks away in our own half and let them have a free delivery into our box. Clark is no slouch in the air either by the way. However, the genius of all tacticians is to use an opponents strength and turn it into their weakness. Whilst both Bristol centre backs are domina

If Gestede is fit I'd consider him, for nothing else but to mark Flint on corners. I cant see any of our centre backs being able to handle him.

maybe so. or maybe i was reacting to some who shot down my reasoning attempt as ''a load of garbage'' and a little patronizing tone slipped into my reply. s this more to the main stream opinion?; i'm losing interest in football altogether. i want to like it, i hope boro can somehow respark the fire(karanka had promise, but failed). but i know deep in my heart they wont. i knew deep down we had absolutely no chance of getting straight back up after the utter shambles of last season(looks like my heart was right). i didnt want monk at all. (reminds me of southgate) i like him, like

erm i disagree completely. we are doing okay, just outside the playoffs. but the zombie's wont be happy unless we win 5-0 every week. even though we had a garbage record breaking top flight season and have a major squad overhaul in the summer. honestly, are you disappointed because we are not in the top two? or are you more bothered about looking good? because karanka had winning ugly down to a tee for 2/3 years. because we were always there or there abouts nobody cared. now monk has us struggling a bit considering our squad. but if we were top 2 nobody would give a monkeys how we play

I don't buy the relegation hangover narrative, in August maybe but not in late November. If I'm wrong and that is the case we are failing to man manage the players properly. Maybe we need a sports psychologist. If confidence is low it's down to recent poor performances not something that happened 6 months ago.

I completely agree with this and will add that the riverside crowd has become a very very different crowd to the crowds who delighted in Uve Fuchs, jan åge fjørtoft, Craig Hignett and Jaime Moreno to then be left jaw dropped by the Brian Robson then Steve Mclaren eras. A new state of the art stadium only a few years after seeing the beloved Ayresome Park gates locked, signings like Juninhio and Ravanelli - these were unnatural times for Boro fans, something the like of they'd never seen. The club looked at families and youth to make the club appealing to them and bring more support to the cl

I completely agree with this and will add that the riverside crowd has become a very very different crowd to the crowds who delighted in Uve Fuchs, jan åge fjørtoft, Craig Hignett and Jaime Moreno to then be left jaw dropped by the Brian Robson then Steve Mclaren eras. A new state of the art stadium only a few years after seeing the beloved Ayresome Park gates locked, signings like Juninhio and Ravanelli - these were unnatural times for Boro fans, something the like of they'd never seen. The club looked at families and youth to make the club appealing to them and bring more support to the cl

No I'm not a disciple of keeping 7 back at all times! But I'm more concerned about being exposed down the centre of the pitch than out on the touchline. The other issue with our full backs is that I don't think either are great defenders and offer more going forward. Let's say they play a lot deeper, almost behind the ball most of the time, where does our attacking width come from?

You've got more chance of winning the lottery :)

Not really, you are talking about taking away a defensive midfielder for a flair player against the top teams. I'd argue that will weaken an area that we were already exposed in on Saturday.

I tell you what, bookmark this post. If we finish above Wolves I'll give £500 to a charity of your choice.

I have a lot of respect for Steve Gibson, the fact that he gives younger managers time in the job is very admirable. I would also say that's sometimes his weakness, he gave Robson, Southgate and arguably Karanka too long. The only manager where I think he proved the fans wrong in that regard was McClaren who maybe could have been sacked after the Villa defeat. If it turns out eventually that Monk isn't the right man for the job, giving him time and more money could prove to be a huge mistake.

Fair enough - You obviously sound content enough with the performances and hopefully a playoff push. We've all got different aspirations I suppose.

What is you main reason for not wanting Monk sacked? Do you think he'll get us back to the Premier league?

I agree with some of those points and disagree with others. Yes we are badly lacking a natural left back, I love Fabios effort and desire but he can't defend very well and we are just lacking balance out there. It's ok suggesting reigning the full backs in but I still think Christie is one of our most effective options going forward. He does lack an end product but he won lots of corners on Saturday which was where our main threat came from really. Maybe we do need to be a bit more measured about it though, that I would agree with. I can understand your concern about leaving oursel

I'll tell you how we lost, despite playing pretty well in the first half we still didn't defend properly. When Derby counter attacked they were exposing a huge gap between our centre mids and centre backs. For their 1st goal we were all over the place, players were out of position and we didn't pick up the runners. Despite the much improved first half WE WERE STILL LOSING. We came out slow in the second half like we do every single game (this isnt a coincidence when it happens every week), the players werent switched on and the game was over at 2-0. After that we fell apart.

You can be organised in defence and still commit men forward. It doesn't have to be one or the other. We've conceded stupid goals from set pieces this season as well that never happened as regularly under Karanka. That's nothing to do with having no inclination to attack it's about fundamental organisation.

Can you explain why Monk still can't get a team defending properly? It took Venables 2 weeks on the training ground to sort our defence out. It took Karanka a similar amount of time. I don't expect instant success but I expect a manager that can coach the basics!

What a load of garbage, no one is demanding instant results it's been the performances that people are critical of. I feel as a Monk critic I've been constructive in every single post I've made as have the other critics. I don't see anyone just saying Monk out, just because we are critical it doesn't make us plastic, immature, hysterical or any of the other criticism thrown around recently. I haven't seen any of those traits on here actually, people are being quite measured and giving valid reasons for the criticism. It feels like the last defence from the Monk fans, the excuses ar

As an argument to suggest that the manager is underachieving. We haven't even got onto our wage bill yet compared to the rest of the league!

:rolleyes: You have a transfer budget. With the budget, it can be decreased by transfer expenditure and increased by transfer income. Not all transfer income goes directly into the transfer budget. That's dependent on the percentage of transfer revenue that will be reallocated elsewhere. However, for a club like ours that is in a pretty healthy financial position, I can't imagine that percentage is very high if at all existent. That percentage would have been much higher during Mogga's time at the club but much lower now. As I've said, people say 'we spent £50m on new players' as i