Smokedsalmon
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Posts posted by Smokedsalmon
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Wilder will be bringing him in for his impact in the dressing room. He's said a few times we have no leaders or big characters. Warnock used to say the team was too "nice".
Players like Lenighan & McGoldrick fulfill the roles that players like Leadbitter & Nugent used to do last time we went up.
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7 minutes ago, T-CIDER said:
Going by the assists Giles made, we're going to have to improve in the box from crosses and set pieces. Judging by Gyokeres on Transfermarkt he scored one header last season. Crooks would be an obvious target, and Coburn when he gets the minutes, but I think it's an area we really have to work on.
Very very few goals are scored via headers, even from crosses. Look at how many assists Jones got by putting low crosses into the danger area that were put in by a free man (usually Crooks, who actually did score a couple headers from him as well).
Put balls in behind the defensive line towards the far post and good strikers will pounce. Heading ability is really neither here nor there.
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Isn't it an optional clause you have to insert to say a loanee can't play against you?
Feel like Wilder might have deliberately said "let him play"...
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Lumley by the way is 100% keeping 2 clean sheets against us. Probably get a goal and an assist while he's at it. Inevitable that whichever £10m striker we bring in has a tap in from 2 yards and somehow Lumley will get his *** in the way and bounce it out.
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Awful isn't it the off-season. Sat here at quarter past seven on a Saturday night dreaming of Paddy McNair pinging heat-seeker balls 45 yards across the pitch and out of play after dawdling on the ball for 10 seconds. Hits you right in the gut when you don't have it man.
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53 minutes ago, "KM" said:
I get that but I’m failing to see where KS fits in with all of this. I thought he was brought in because of his links/expertise but I’m yet to see any of it in action, I get that it’s early in his tenure but I was hoping it would be more ambitious/exciting than being linked with a 36 year old Tom Heaton.
It still just feels like we are going from one extreme to another without a proper long term plan in place. This summer it feels like Wilder’s remit is to get us up next season hence the link with all the experiences pro’s but what if we don’t go up are we going to have another rebuild next year? It’s probably all paper talk rubbish anyway so let’s hope things pick up.
Think it's worth remembering we've never had a problem identifying good players, we've always had a problem securing them and getting deals over the line.
How many times have we ended up with our 4/5th choice over the past few years?
KS is probably streamlining the whole process and making sure we get who our manager wants early doors. Don't think he's been brought in to magic wonderkids out of thin air after 6 months.
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3 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:
I think what makes the difference is that he very very rarely posts anything that doesn't happen. When he says something is happening, it generally happens. Not many other journalists can say that - possibly because they do break things early so more can go wrong.
He words things in such a way that he can never be wrong until it's 100%. The guy genuinely posts about 50 variety of the same tweet about a story before it finally breaks. Absolute genius in terms of building his brand and making a living, but if he says something "isn't done" it translates to "I don't know what's going on and nobody has broken it with 100% certainty yet, so I won't commit".
Either way I'm *** myself that we're getting 20m for Spence here. What a time to be alive.
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5 minutes ago, nunthorpered said:
I think Romano is a bit behind this one for once
He pretty much just re-posts other journalists' work most of the time. Guy has become a bit of a meme because of "here we go!" but in terms of exclusives, he's pretty much useless apart from a few select Spanish/Italian clubs.
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1 minute ago, "KM" said:
I think Gayle and Rhodes would be an exciting pairing.
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1 minute ago, Johnmfc81 said:
We already have that in Watmore. We need two top strikers, and maybe a prem loan to add competition
Yeah have to be honest I think it would be a horrific signing but I can see the sense in it.
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Considering we literally need to sign 3 strikers it makes sense that one of them would be a cheaper/older option.
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Just now, "KM" said:
I think with the figures being quoted for Spence alone we should have more than enough to bring in the players we need.
The maximum I've seen him valued at is 15m.
Our shopping list is;
First-choice GK
LWB
LCB
CB
CM
ST
ST
At an absolute minimum, we need all those positions filled with first team players, and we would still have very little depth afterwards. Is 15m enough for that? I'm not so sure.
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Just now, "KM" said:
I can understand the reasoning behind selling Spence but I just can’t get my head around fans being ok with the likes of Jones, McNair and Crooks being sold. These are players we should be looking to build our side around.
It's just a question of necessity for me. We haven't got enough money to build the squad we need. If we sold 1-2 players we could buy 4-5 players who are better than what we have, and more importantly, that we desperately need.
Normally that would be a bit silly to say, but our squad is literally that unbalanced.
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Just now, TLF10 said:
@Smokedsalmon. Tav and Fry both have 2yrs left on their contracts. Wilder has gone out his way to praise Tav so I dont think he going anywhere.
Fry am unsure of as he does not strike me as the commanding centre half Wilder wants. He been bullied a few times this season.
If they're both on 2 years then excellent news as I think it's more likely to be McNair who goes, then.
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Based on Wilder's interview I can see one/two of Tav/Fry/McNair/Jones being sold along with Spence.
Spence will go for 12-15m and I think Tav/Fry would be 7-10m based on the final year of their contract. Jones we might get another 15m for. Maybe 5m for McNair.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, there's nobody in this squad that I would mind going that much because they have all had a loser's mentality for years. Some of them have been coached by a collective of Monk, Pulis, Woodgate, Warnock. Four managers who drilled the fear of losing in to them, the pump it long at first sign of pressure mentality, a culture of abject football and acceptance of failure to pull through big games.
We need fresh players with a fresh mentality to come in and really believe they can win every game. Players who play with a bit of zip, spark, confidence. Take a player on, show for the ball, get the tempo up (like McGree does, even if it doesn't always come off for him).
Personally excited as hell for this window. It's refreshing not to fear losing any of your players.
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1 minute ago, TheJew said:
The passing interlude between Sporar and McGree highlighted everything wrong with this setup - slow, ponderous and pedestrian.
"slow, ponderous and pedestrian" literally describes Middlesbrough FC since the year we were in the Prem.
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1 minute ago, AnglianRed said:
They might work with the right players...but Boro don't have the right players.
Even then, I wonder how he was that successful with Sheffield? Other teams will suss you out sooner or later...and when they do you have to adapt. Wilder hasn't shown much sign of that.
For that reason I'm not totally blaming the players. He has to take some of the blame.
Lots of the blame. He has not budged at all from his Sheffield system despite not having the players to do it. Ridiculous.
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Just now, J.T. said:
Out of interest, when was the last time Sporar and Watmore did anything? Might as well stick Crooks up too
I don't think you could say 1 of our 4 strikers has had a genuinely good 90 minutes for months now. And it isn't their fault. They're all the same player (try to play on the shoulder and run in behind) and our midfielders are instructed to play the ball long to them where they all lose it because none of them are target men, and the one target man we had in the squad we binned off because he didn't "suit how we play".
🤡
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Just now, diggerlad07 said:
Wilder off to burnley?😅
If he keeps playing this horrific system week in week out despite no improvement I might not even be bothered.
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4 minutes ago, Dan1234 said:
This Boro team has to be one of the weakest mentally/character wise I've seen.
It's a team that's way too used to losing. You can't coach it out of a whole squad.
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4 minutes ago, bmt said:
If Wilder was to go…. Who would be a suitable candidate to replace him???
Dyche all day long.
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The thing that concerns me with Wilder is that his Sheffield United team hit a massive brick wall and by all accounts he just kept smacking his head against it until it broke him.
He's gone away and had a few months away from football to look at what went wrong, what he could do differently, how he could apply a different style of football to his next team and... just done exactly the same thing.
He's coming across like a massive one-trick pony right now - which I guess is one of the issues in having a manager who's assistant seems to be the brains behind the operation.
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1 hour ago, White Band said:
Connolly's big problem is that the vast majority of our fans were prejudiced against him before he even kicked a ball for us. None of our strikers are doing well because none of them are getting any service. Yes, Coburn has come on as a sub and scored (I think he may actually have been assisted by a striker both times) but I think he would struggle with the same lack of service if played from the start and then fans would turn on him as well. You could put Mitrovic in our current team instead of one of our current strikers, and even he would struggle to score.
Spot on.
Our low-tempo, tepid, overly-cautious midfield play is what kills our ability to score goals, not our strikers.
When was the last time we scored a counter-attack? Be interested to see that. Feels like it takes us an age to progress the ball up the pitch.
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4 minutes ago, Changing Times said:
Watmore managed to get himself involved so what’s Connolly’s excuse exactly? Balogun was on for 10 mins, Sporar for about 20 mins. Connolly had 81 mins and if anything got even less involved than he had been in the early parts of the game.
Does Watmore's 1 shot and couple of runs that led to nothing elevate him so far above Connolly?
TeaCider's Summer Transfer Thread 2022 - AKA: Still Going For Just a Little Luongo
in Boro Forum
Posted
I'm sure De Roon ended up playing furthest forward for us in midfield for a while, bizarrely?