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Are we ready for a relegation battle?


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Hull have been in free-fall since losing Bowen, they were absolutely in my thinking for dropping below us, this feels like it could be really positive for us as we aim for our high standard of 'not being one of the worst three sides in the division'. 😄

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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

1 hour ago, wilsoncgp said:

Hull have been in free-fall since losing Bowen, they were absolutely in my thinking for dropping below us, this feels like it could be really positive for us as we aim for our high standard of 'not being one of the worst three sides in the division'. 😄

yep, said in the other thread Hull for me will go down, so we just need to be better than two of Charlton/Luton/Barnsley

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No! Only nine games and most players will be looking for an exit and have no reason to put themselves about. Let’s face facts, would you risk injury and a possible contract with a new club. No! the stats before lockdown show a club in free fall and I don’t believe we have a manager that can, mmm, I don’t believe we have a manager, period..  

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Hi all, I haven’t posted in a while during lockdown due to no football, but it’s nice for it to be on the horizon once again. I hope everyone personally and connected families have been safe and well during lockdown also. 
 

im not confident of staying up personally speaking, and it hates me to say that. My reasons for this are as follows. 
 

1 - I don’t think we have the management and back room staff to gear up for a relegation fight. Nothing so far this season has convinced me otherwise, that we can perform when the pressure is on. 
 

2 - players out of contract and coming to the end of their time with boro will not run themselves into the ground to keep us up. Partly because they’re moving on, but partly because I think they don’t like Woodgate. 

3 - probably what worries me the most is having a fully fit squad to pick from. I don’t know our best 11 because it’s been changed so much all season and I have the feeling that too many options might make Woodgate over complicate things ?

i hope I’m wrong and will fully eat humble pie should we stay up, but just can’t see that happening. We lost to Luton and Barnsley, who on paper we should have beaten. I just don’t think that in the players hearts or heads they want it enough. 

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11 minutes ago, ManBearPig said:

Hi all, I haven’t posted in a while during lockdown due to no football, but it’s nice for it to be on the horizon once again. I hope everyone personally and connected families have been safe and well during lockdown also. 
 

im not confident of staying up personally speaking, and it hates me to say that. My reasons for this are as follows. 
 

1 - I don’t think we have the management and back room staff to gear up for a relegation fight. Nothing so far this season has convinced me otherwise, that we can perform when the pressure is on. 
 

2 - players out of contract and coming to the end of their time with boro will not run themselves into the ground to keep us up. Partly because they’re moving on, but partly because I think they don’t like Woodgate. 

3 - probably what worries me the most is having a fully fit squad to pick from. I don’t know our best 11 because it’s been changed so much all season and I have the feeling that too many options might make Woodgate over complicate things ?

i hope I’m wrong and will fully eat humble pie should we stay up, but just can’t see that happening. We lost to Luton and Barnsley, who on paper we should have beaten. I just don’t think that in the players hearts or heads they want it enough. 

Spot on mate, I can’t see us staying up either  

Now that we are allowed to play-in crowd noises I’ve heard that the club are trying to round up a few Teesside voices to record a rendition of “You only sing when you’re winning” to play over the tannoy. 

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On 6/2/2020 at 8:42 AM, RiseAgainst said:

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?

Hope your family have managed to get through the last few weeks okay (same for the rest of the OneBoro community).

I think after yesterday we have our answer.

Woodgate can say he wasn't prioritising the Swansea game, but pretty much ALL our remaining fixtures will be just as tough, if not tougher.

Hull is the only game we have any real hope of winning. Stoke you could also say is winnable, but an away fixture, so not easy.

We needed to restart the season positively and while beating Swansea would have been a big ask, we needed to see at least an improved performance. I watched the highlights on the EFL show last night and our play at the back (I can't bring myself to call it defending) was just utterly cringeworthy.

We also won 10 corners, while Swansea had none - yet we failed to create any goalscoring chances from them.

Its early days, but on the evidence so far (and the season pre-lockdown) Boro are simply ready for relegation...not a relegation battle.

As I've said many times before, I would love to know what work Woodgate and the coaches actually do with the players, because we have got worse over the season, rather than improving.

 

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On 6/19/2020 at 7:07 PM, BillyWoofs_shinpad said:

Spot on mate, I can’t see us staying up either  

Now that we are allowed to play-in crowd noises I’ve heard that the club are trying to round up a few Teesside voices to record a rendition of “You only sing when you’re winning” to play over the tannoy. 

I think Chris Rea's Road to Hell might be quite appropriate too. 

 

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1 minute ago, thatoldchestnut said:

Well as mentioned above. Relegation yes. Battle no.

So only half of the thread can be closed 😂

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14 minutes ago, RiseAgainst said:

If/when relegation is mathematically confirmed, I'll start a new thread called "Are we ready for League One?" I suspect the answer will still be no if Woodgate is in charge.

Tbf we can probably just keep this thread open for when we’re bottom of league 1....

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Whether we stay up or go down, how many of the current squad of players will we have left for next season, and how many of them do we want anyway.

There are players still in contract who will be on big wages particularly if our destination is League 1 and they may need moving on to both reduce the wage bill and to raise a bob or two.

Then we have to consider incomings as we cant survive on the young players alone. How many incomings and what sort of players do we need. We wont be shopping at Harrods more like the pound shops.

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1 hour ago, thatoldchestnut said:

Whether we stay up or go down, how many of the current squad of players will we have left for next season, and how many of them do we want anyway.

There are players still in contract who will be on big wages particularly if our destination is League 1 and they may need moving on to both reduce the wage bill and to raise a bob or two.

Then we have to consider incomings as we cant survive on the young players alone. How many incomings and what sort of players do we need. We wont be shopping at Harrods more like the pound shops.

My concern is who would want to come to Boro in our present state? A Club in free-fall with a Management team that are inept at best. We apparently no longer seem able to bribe players with above average wage deals so why would any up and coming young player want to come to Boro?

Its far more likely that we will see more of what we saw last summer, players with questionable ability or flawed character traits with maybe one in three (Dijksteel) perhaps eventually making it after a year or two of adjustment. Our Scouting is as bad as our Coaching so I don't hold out much hope for any rough Diamonds being unearthed.

We will need to replace five or six of those out of contract, most of whom started yesterday plus a few more to replace those who will inevitably have to be sold on at knock down prices to get them off the wage bill. We could be looking at a dozen new faces coming in with a clueless Manager to mould them into an effective League One unit.

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I am 100% convinced that a good manager is worth more than good players. And that is the hill I will die on. 
 

Other squads on paper are not as good as us and Swansea as an example yesterday had relatively lesser known players than some of ours, yet they played us off the park. Why? Because their manager and coaching staff know what they’re doing. 


Gibson has put his faith into an unknown quantity with Woodgate and co and they have shafted it at all points of the season. I have no idea why they are still here or why they were here in the first place. We will go down, I think that much is for certain now. The decisions he chose to make yesterday were baffling and having 3 months to prepare to be down 3-0 down in 34 mins is horrendous. 
 

I really hope that when the season ends we reinvest more into a manager and back room staff who are capable. Woodgate should walk and hold his hands up and admit he is out of his depth. I think most fans could sympathise with accepting the job, but fans won’t forgive him for not walking before he takes us down. 
 

I know we talk about the Karanka regime, but how chalk and cheese is it to where we are now. It says a lot about Woodgate that makes me yearn for Tony Pulis back in charge! 
 

I was giving woodgate the benefit of the doubt seeing that team sheet and felt dare I say optimistic, but yesterday has sapped all of that out of me, well and truly .

 

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