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Are we ready for a relegation battle?


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Hi all, haven't posted on here for a while because my family's been having a really hard time during lockdown. Things in Scotland are finally getting a little easier as restrictions begin to lift, though any sense of collective solidarity has long since evaporated.

Now we know when the Championship is restarting, I thought it'd be interesting to ask people's views on whether Boro will have used the time wisely to prepare for the upcoming relegation battle. The lockdown has given coaches a unique opportunity to review what's happened to date and refine their tactics, and it'll be interesting to see if our management team has learned any lessons about how badly our season was going, or gained any worthwhile insights.

Is anyone expecting us to play more incisively/intelligently/impressively in the run-in? Or are we likely to have nine more games of thud and blunder?

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So what you are saying is we could stay up or we could go down. 

Sacking Karanka was the worst decision, only seconded by not backing him in the transfer market when in the Prem. Even if we had gone down, he should have remained and we would be back up. G

We've got a global pandemic, a looming recession, a clown as the leader of our country, a racist madman in charge of the most powerful country in the world but still the worst thing for me is having W

It's impossible to tell before a ball has been kicked. We just started up last week in Denmark and only one full round of fixtures has been played and my own team has played one extra game that was previously postponed. It'v very clear to see who has been keeping in good shape during the lockdown and who has been taking it more relaxed. Some look like they've come back with a bang and a point to prove and others have come back looking heavy and not fully focussed. I guess it's like after any other pre-season. But the games are very competitive though and it's good to watch. By adding some crowd noise you don't ge the feeling that it's like a pre season training game.

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No, but then I'm not sure anybody else is. Luton have made a change in order to better prepare themselves I guess but generally speaking, I suspect clubs are not in a good place going into the restart. I suspect it will be much of a muchness across the relegation battling teams for the first couple of games and there won't be a great deal of momentum built. So taking it one game at a time is perhaps more important than ever.

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@RiseAgainst hope your family are all doing ok now.

I hope we are ready as i hope we are in a better position than we were 3 months ago. We got some key players back who were not available last time. Ayala, Fry and Roberts who are huge for us. Fry has had an up down season but little doubting Ayala is our best defender and Roberts our best attacker so having them back i hope makes a big difference on pitch. 

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Having the long term injured back should be a big help to us. Agree with BD that it’s impossible to tell until the games get going again but having a full squad to select from should be a big plus for us. I feel sorry for Charlton fans as it looks like they have all sorts of problems that won’t be beneficial to a relegation battle.

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13 minutes ago, Changing Times said:

I think we're screwed to be honest.  We've only won one game in five months 🤦‍♂️

Looking at it the wrong way around CT. We haven’t lost in four months 

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I just looked at our fixture list and honestly don't see why we should all but consider we are going to be relegated. I think that if any time was good to change the momentum of the table, it's right now. We could just as easily stretch the gap a bit more between us and relegation as we could fall into it again. I'm not saying it's all positive but I don't think I'd classify our relegation as probable based on our fixture list, tbh.

So many of the games we have left are much of a muchness. Our highest opponents are Bristol City, Millwall and Cardiff and two of those are home games. We have two pretty big away games with Hull and Stoke, both of whom are currently making headlines by their dispute with the EFL. QPR, Reading and Sheffield Wednesday are all teams with close to nothing to play for and I reckon its those sat in the middle that could end up truly losing their momentum and motivation to play to their best. And finally there's Swansea who can maybe still make the play-offs, I think that if we can beat Swansea, Hull and Stoke, we're sound. IF.

It's all hypothetical but basically, I think you can put forward an argument for either side of it. We can definitely still get relegated. We can definitely still avoid it and I think right now, it's pretty much in the balance of individual sides and how well they deal with what's happened over the last 3 months and very little to do with where we sit compared to them or how our season's gone to this point.

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I'm interested as how players will perform playing behind closed doors. You always hear of players who were brilliant in training but could never find that performance in the games. Without the pressure of fans I wonder if we will see some surprise performances from certain players.

From watching a bit of the Bundesliga this past week or so it seems the home advantage doesn't have as big an impact without the fans there.

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I think we'll be ok in the end but it's a lot closer than it should be.  I don't think we'll be relegated as there are worse teams than us and that'll be the difference rather than us being too good ourselves.  Things need sorting out in a big way before the following season.

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7 hours ago, Changing Times said:

I think we'll be ok in the end but it's a lot closer than it should be.  I don't think we'll be relegated as there are worse teams than us and that'll be the difference rather than us being too good ourselves.  Things need sorting out in a big way before the following season.

Tend to agree with this but as others alluded to it will be strange how the players react without the noise of the fans. Clearly we will find out who the vocal players are.

Disaster of a season which became a disaster for everyone

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14 hours ago, wilsoncgp said:

Our highest opponents are Bristol City, Millwall and Cardiff and two of those are home games.

Is playing at home still going to be an advantage, in the absence of crowds?

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