MikeyBoro
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Posts posted by MikeyBoro
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And looking at the current unavailable but expected to return this season list (Dijksteel, McGree, Silvera, Dieng, Lath, McNair, Bangura) you can’t help but feel like there might be a couple of outgoings as our squad would be too big if most players were fit.
Possibly Gilbert out on loan and McNair to leave?
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So our 20 man squad for Millwall could be:
Glover
Jones
Ayling
Van Den Berg
Fry
Clarke
Engel
Barlaser
Howson
Hackney
O’Brien
Jones
Rogers
Azaz
Greenwood
Gilbert
Crooks
Coburn
McCabe
KavanaghLooks so much stronger than we’ve seen in recent weeks and that’s assuming both Bangura and Lath are out, and no return to the bench for Forss. If two of them are ok for the squad then we have a full senior squad fit again.
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3 minutes ago, MarkT73 said:
I thought yellows were wiped after QF stage, meaning Rogers can play v chelsea
It’s fairly unclear but I’ve seen quite a few people saying he’s banned
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I think we will see Gilbert go out on loan as soon as Azaz is in.
That said, if he doesn’t go before the Aston Villa game, we could play a front four of Greenwood, Azaz, Rogers and Gilbert against them without interfering with fitness levels for the Chelsea match, as three of them can’t play anyway and Gilbert would likely only make the bench.
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Reasons to be optimistic:
Chelsea have only won 6 league games all season
They have a long injury list like us
Jackson will be at the AFCON
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2 hours ago, Neverbefore said:
How were ell, rogers and silvera last night? Anyone able to give ratings for those of us who missed it?
Latte Lath lively and should’ve had a brace, probably Rogers best game for us so far and looked more comfortable than previous games, Silvera was lively too, his dribbling was pretty good but his decision making needs some improvement. There was one point where he beat 2 or 3 players and showed some good skill, but then slowed down and didn’t know who to pass to. I think it’ll come in time but definitely still room for improvement in Silvera’s game, that said he clearly has talent.
Ratings:
Glover - 6 (admittedly didn’t have much to do but did drop a clanger at one point)
Smith - 7
McNair - 7
Fry - 7
O’Brien - 8
Hackney - 9
Barlaser - 8
Silvera - 6
Rogers - 7
McGree - 8
Latte Lath - 7
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It might get overlooked by the performances of others but I thought Crooks was key today. Without him I don’t think Jones has that kind of game. He looked a lot better playing further to the right and deeper, rather than playing the number ten, and was involved in a lot of our chances in the first half. Keeps his place for me.
It was a slight system tweak to make it more of a 4-3-3 and it worked very well.
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Controversially I’d actually have Crooks in my starting XI, just not in that position. I think he links so well with Jones that we should make that partnership key to how we play, as it was the most effective part of Wilder’s system.
If everyone was fit, something like:
Dieng
McNair Fry Lenihan Bangura
Crooks Hackney O’Brien
Jones McGree
Latte Lath
would give us the best balance, bringing the best parts of the Carrick and Wilder systems together. Effectively a back 5 in defence with McNair dropping in and Jones coming back. We could make the pitch wide just like last season with Bangura and Jones playing the wingback role, but still with enough bodies in the midfield to keep that defensive stability, whilst still being equally dangerous in attack. I think Crooks would hit double figures again in that team. Like it or not he’s probably the best goalscorer we’ve got, at least until Latte Lath finds his shooting boots.
And no proper number 10, which is essentially a wasted position for us now that Akpom has left. We don’t have anyone that can play it effectively so we just need to get rid. McGree or O’Brien could still occupy that space when Bangura gets right up the pitch.
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Had a look on that Peterborough forum. First time poster has put that up, and people now saying it’s Bristol Rovers.
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Josh Coburn minutes per championship goal: 111.2
Tom Cannon minutes per championship goal: 209.75
Same age. Similar experience. Coburn more professional goals and minutes. I’m not saying Coburn is the better player, but we need to get over the idea that we’ve missed on some superstar striker just because he’s got a massively inflated price of £7.5m. We’ve gone in with a more than reasonable bid and Leicester have massively overpaid. I’m glad we haven’t bid any more than £4m on him.
If it helps, pretend we’ve just paid £7.5m for a highly rated young English striker called Josh Coburn from a Premier League club, who hit double figures in League One last season and has an excellent goals per minute ratio in the Championship.
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I’m not convinced that the gap in quality between Cannon and Coburn is massive. Coburn has more professional goals and I reckon he’s probably got a better, or similar, goals per minute championship record based on the amount of subs appearances he has(is anyone able to verify?)
Cannon scored against Swansea, Reading, QPR, Blackpool, Rotherham, Cardiff and Wigan last season. That’s the bottom six plus Swansea.
The hype seems to be based on the fact he’s employed by a PL club (who are looking to cash in) and because he’s ‘the next Cameron Archer’ because he scored goals for Preston too???
My question is if Cannon is worth £7m, how much is Coburn worth, and what’s the opportunity cost of us spending millions on someone at roughly the same stage of his career and potentially stalling Coburn’s development?
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How close is O’Brien according to reports? As good as done?
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3 minutes ago, diggerlad07 said:
Other teams for Cannon are Sunderland and Norwich .... Completely believe this is a smoke screen after speaking to my friend
A smokescreen meaning those clubs spreading this news about us or us spreading it whilst we work towards another target?
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22 minutes ago, Aphex_Boro said:
What's a reverse midfielder
Played many an hour of FM in my time and still haven't a clue what that is
*reserve…. serves me right for not spell checking 😂
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7 minutes ago, Tudders80 said:
Trying to be positive but does the greenwood stuff seem a bit Alex mowett ish? Everyone seemed keen, loan from same division, team recently relegated, a position we have a few players in. Never gets a kick, is one of the loanees that ended up being meh.
Hope I'm wrong and he wins player of the year !!
I’ll be honest, if he’s as good as Mowatt was, I’ll be happy. Mowatt was the perfect reverse midfielder last season. Didn’t play every game but when he did, he was usually pretty good. I’m not expecting Greenwood to be one of our main men.
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Does anyone know much about this Greenwood? Seems weird to me that we are loaning reserve players from a division rival, Or will it be with a view to a permanent?
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This is the kind of game where we should be turning up and playing them off the park. It’s so frustrating to see us conceding weak goals. There’s clearly an issue with the system.
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Interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on this?
I think the obvious weakness is the fullbacks potentially being exploited, but a good athletic defensive midfielder (who’s only job was to defend) could fill those holes when we attack, and then we’re packing the midfield sufficiently to stop counters and to stop the issue of teams running through us, with essentially 4 central players protecting the defence, with McGree providing support to both attack and defence.
Then the positive is that although we’ve got more defensive cover in the middle, we’ve still got a goal threat up top with Forss and Latte Lath up there, to latch on balls from Engel or Jones, or link play with McGree.
This would also allow us to see the best of Hackney and Barlaser, who would have freedom to roam and attack without as much defensive responsibility.
I think the success would come down how to good the DM was and positional awareness of both Barlaser and Hackey to know when to go forward and drop back.
Swap Howson for Barlaser if that’s your preference.
And Rogers or Silvera for McGree, who would move from side to side depending which flank we attacked from.
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5 minutes ago, Hendrie_7 said:
The lack of strong rumours/links is really starting to worry me.
You'd have thought if we were getting close to some signings then somebody would have got wind of at least one of them by now surely.
I think we can maybe excuse it for now given the bank holiday and less journalists working today, but I agree, I’d be worried if there’s nothing by close of play tomorrow.
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Every single summer the Gazette come out and say we need X number of players in X positions, and almost every time we fail to get that number in. I’ve got little hope we will sign 2 or more players in the next week.
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This part of the season absolutely matters. For context, we have now lost the same amount of games as Burnley lost all of last season.
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18 minutes ago, wilsoncgp said:
I don't agree with everything you've said but I think a lot of it is right on the money. I think Carrick will have a couple of things he sticks to, a back 4 for example seems to be very much something he likes. But it's midfield onwards that he's got to try and achieve some success by perhaps thinking about the same problem a little differently.
And in my eyes we have to give him a little patience with that too with a lot of new lads, particularly young prospects in the building this summer, with seemingly more reinforcements to come. We might get there, we might not but he is a young man who has still not been in his first management job 12 months, we have to let him try to work his way out of this and give him time to work with the new tools he's been given.
I agree - I didn’t want to give the wrong impression in my criticism of Carrick. I still think he’s the man for the job and I’m grateful to have a young, up and coming manager who wants to play good football and score goals.
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It needs to be a 4-3-3 with a new DM.
Dieng
Smith (ideally a new RB though)
Lenihan
Fry
Engel
New DM
Hackney
Barlaser (or McGree, but playing more centrally and slightly deeper than usual)
Forss
Latte Lath
Silvera
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I was at the game today - here’s my take:
Our situation is worrying, but there are positives to take. I think the majority of the personnel we have at the club is good enough. We have lots of young, exciting talent in that squad, and certainly have a team which should have picked up more than one point from these initial four games.
I think the issue is almost entirely with our current system. Whilst I think Carrick and the staff have done a terrific job so far, I think the blame for our recent run of form has to sit with them. We are simply no longer playing to the strengths of the players we have within the team. When Carrick came in, he looked at the squad and created a system which suited the players we had. He dropped Akpom into the second striker position where he thrived, and gave Giles freedom to attack despite playing a flat back four. There’s other examples, like playing Forss as an inside forward, but you get the picture. It worked.
However, this time around, he’s tried to make the players fit the system, rather than building a system to fit the players. Most of us will have seen the diagrams comparing Engel to Giles, and Latte Lath to Archer. From a statistical point of view, these two players are supposed to be a carbon copy - but the issue is, they’re not. They will have strengths and weaknesses that Giles and Archer didn’t have, so trying to play the exact same system is ludicrous. Then you’ve got the issue of asking Rogers/Crooks to play like Akpom. Carrick is asking these new signings to emulate last season exactly, wanting us to play the same way. The management team need to take a step back and look at the players we’ve got in the squad, and make the relevant tweaks to suit the qualities of these players. Asking Crooks to play the Akpom role is ridiculous, when he’s clearly not suitable. That’s one issue. The bigger issue and most ironic part is that the system we are trying to force doesn't even working anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if we had started the season in the same way even with Archer, Akpom, Giles and Ramsey in this team. It worked well during Carricks first 15-20 games, when we were a bit more unpredictable, and teams didn’t really know how to play against us. But as others have said, this has been an issue since around April.
The problem started away at Huddersfield last season, when Neil Warnock showed the rest of the league how to beat us. Carrick’s system had been exposed for its flaws. Fast forward to this season and this is still an issue, and we’re showing no signs of changing our play style. The major flaw, for me, is the midfield, who time and time again today failed to cover the defence and left us exposed. As others have pointed out, we need a quality defensive midfielder in as soon as possible. I think there’s also merit in dropping into a 4-3-3, to make us a more solid unit. It was telling that we actually created the best chances today when we were down to 10-men, and were more focused on defending, with loads of players behind the ball!
Persisting with the current system just won’t work - it’s too complicated and we’re asking for too much from Championship-quality players. It’s time to look at what the players in our squad do best, and play to their strengths, and make the correct small tweaks to the system (and that’s all that is needed, small tweaks), to make us a team that other teams fear playing again, because at the moment it’s just all too easy to beat us.
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The Transfer Window
in Boro Forum
Posted
Hackney out for >£20m and O’Brien in for £5m would be good business for us.