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Middlesbrough FC vs Birmingham City FC                                                                                  Saturday 30th October – 3:00 pm                                             

Out of all the reasons, one is most important - appointment of Agnew when we still had a good chance of staying up. We threw in the towel with however many number of games left to go with that decisio

Mate it’s against 3 of the poorest teams in the league. The issue is that time and time again Warnock has shown that he can’t cut it anymore against better teams.  Why did he change a winning side a

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12 hours ago, AnglianRed said:

We spent over a decade in the Premier League, but all it took was one bad season and lack of a plan to deal with getting relegated to see the club stuck in the Championship for 7 years.

We got promoted under Karanka and spent big, but a disjointed squad that didn't gel (plus the manager having a major bust-up) saw us go straight back down.

THAT's why you "need to be ready" or at least have a plan in place to deal with most foreseeable problems.

Of course there are never any guarantees, but we've had ample experience of what happens when we just blindly splurge money without any real idea of what we are doing. Its not just the relegation that follows, but the years of cost-cutting, selling our best players, bringing in managers to keep us going on a shoestring budget.

And did anybody really enjoy that last season in the PL? I sure as hell didn't.

Quite frankly I'd rather we stayed in the Championship rather than see us go up with that hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach, knowing we're likely to just be cannon fodder for the other teams.

 

 

No sorry I don’t agree. The relegation and consequential fallow years that followed in the Championship were a result of bad decision making with the money that we’d attained. Of course you have to spend the money wisely that goes without saying.
 

I’d also note that, if anything your example proves that there’s no guarantee’s with building a squad that’s “ready” for Premier League. We’d had years of planning under, what some believe, was a Karanka master plan. Look how that turned out. 

I can count on one hand the number of years I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a Championship season. A year in the Premier League provides a wealth (literally) of opportunities and excitement including cup opportunities, the chance to watch top quality players at our club, full stadiums and great atmospheres. All the things you can only dream of in the Championship.

I’d also note that the first half of that season in the Premier League was thoroughly enjoyable and much more so than the vast majority of Championship seasons over the past 20 years. We were still battling to stay up until the closing stages of the season, so it’s not we had a season like Norwich usually have, for example.

 

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13 hours ago, LinoJo3 said:

One reason why we will never make the play offs under warnock is our lack of chances created. We rarely trouble teams, we don’t dominate the ball and therefore just can’t break teams down.

This all comes from the coaching, the team is clearly not being coached well enough on attacking formations and patterns. Under Karanka you could watch us and wether it was working or not at least see what the plan was to break down the defence.

Warnock is all about winning 2nd balls and hopefully getting a break away. When we put a decent passing move together it’s all over Twitter and our fans are buzzing over it, that shows how little passing moves we actually put together. 
 

Even if we did make the play offs we would be swept aside most likely by a team that operates at a far higher level technically. We play league 1 tactics with championship players, our games often end up flat and drab because our defending is generally ok but our attackers don’t have a clue what to do apart so they play off the cuff to some Extent. We’re going nowhere.

100%, it's clear to see every week. No patterns to our attack and nobody knows where anyone else is going to be - we're totally reliant on the forwards figuring it out on their own. I think that feeds into why we see so many 'bad decisions' and attacks fizzle out into nothing. 

In a properly coached side, you can anticipate where your team mates will be in certain situations. Obviously I don't expect us to play like Liverpool but when you think about their forwards... As a midfielder or full back you know exactly where each one will be, how they want the ball played, and what runs they'll make. 

It seriously begs the question of what the hell we do in training every week? Because it's clearly not defensive shape either. 

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1 hour ago, Humpty said:

No sorry I don’t agree. The relegation and consequential fallow years that followed in the Championship were a result of bad decision making with the money that we’d attained. Of course you have to spend the money wisely that goes without saying.
 

I’d also note that, if anything your example proves that there’s no guarantee’s with building a squad that’s “ready” for Premier League. We’d had years of planning under, what some believe, was a Karanka master plan. Look how that turned out. 

I can count on one hand the number of years I’ve thoroughly enjoyed a Championship season. A year in the Premier League provides a wealth (literally) of opportunities and excitement including cup opportunities, the chance to watch top quality players at our club, full stadiums and great atmospheres. All the things you can only dream of in the Championship.

I’d also note that the first half of that season in the Premier League was thoroughly enjoyable and much more so than the vast majority of Championship seasons over the past 20 years. We were still battling to stay up until the closing stages of the season, so it’s not we had a season like Norwich usually have, for example.

 

That is literally the core of my argument.

We spent money without any real thought, hoping to achieve instant success, then having to backtrack and cut costs when it didn't work out. Chopping and changing the club's philosophy from one manager to the next.

There was never any point at which anyone thought, "Hold on, lets just stop and think about this". We were always reacting to the current situation, rather than trying to set out some longer term goals and figuring out steps to achieve them.

I'd say Karanka's reign was more a happy accident than the result of any actual planning. He was a total unknown entity as a manager. Obviously he had a bit of pedigree, having worked under Mourinho and he was able to introduce some discipline and defensive philosophy to our play. Unfortunately it turned out he didn't have the man management skills to go with his tactical nous.

As far as the PL season is concerned, I'm not sure if it was just poor spending, the fact he was out of his depth or a bit of both. Whatever the reasons, it obviously didn't turn out well.

Big crowds and great atmospheres might make for a good matchday experience, but don't help the club in the long run. Also can't imagine the atmospheres were that great while we were losing 12 of our last 20 games and it was looking fairly certain we were going down.

We actually finished that season 12 points adrift of Watford in 17th, so its not like we were unlucky to get relegated. It was a pretty lousy season. We were 18th with 12 games to go, 19th the game after that and never moved again until the end of the season.

Boro have also proven quite comprehensively that the Premier League millions can quickly evaporate, if you don't have strict discipline on wages and transfer fees and don't do due diligence about whether players will actually fit in at the club.

Which goes back to my argument about needing a plan in place and sticking to it (unless you have a damn good reason to change it).

 

 

I've never said long term planning guarantees success...but it does mean you're less likely to have to make drastic changes and find yourself in financial strife if things don't go to plan.

 

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My main recollection from our short stay in the top flight was watching the clock on the screen wondering how many more we were liable to concede! To be fair that was mostly under Agnew but there were a lot of dour performances before that, The game against West Brom ( Maybe the second game of the season) springs to mind. Remember watching that in Portugal having made a big deal about booking the TV & it was brutal! 

 

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Talking about whole sale changes .. 

I couldn't help thinking, the team we fielded this Saturday v Brum ... only 2 players had played with George Friend for us .. Howson and McNair ... and maybe Tav 

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The first few months of Valdes were a nightmare, clearly lacking match practice plus he had no understanding or relationship with the defence in front of him. 

This was then followed on by mediocre to moderate performances at very best. He was far from the hoped for something special before ending his time with a strop and throwing his toys out.

All in all a destructive character with questionable ability when he wasn't playing behind a Barca team. Not as bad as Guzan but nowhere near the level required and I think he knew it which is why he downed tools.

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1 hour ago, AnglianRed said:

That is literally the core of my argument.

We spent money without any real thought, hoping to achieve instant success, then having to backtrack and cut costs when it didn't work out. Chopping and changing the club's philosophy from one manager to the next.

There was never any point at which anyone thought, "Hold on, lets just stop and think about this". We were always reacting to the current situation, rather than trying to set out some longer term goals and figuring out steps to achieve them.

I'd say Karanka's reign was more a happy accident than the result of any actual planning. He was a total unknown entity as a manager. Obviously he had a bit of pedigree, having worked under Mourinho and he was able to introduce some discipline and defensive philosophy to our play. Unfortunately it turned out he didn't have the man management skills to go with his tactical nous.

As far as the PL season is concerned, I'm not sure if it was just poor spending, the fact he was out of his depth or a bit of both. Whatever the reasons, it obviously didn't turn out well.

Big crowds and great atmospheres might make for a good matchday experience, but don't help the club in the long run. Also can't imagine the atmospheres were that great while we were losing 12 of our last 20 games and it was looking fairly certain we were going down.

We actually finished that season 12 points adrift of Watford in 17th, so its not like we were unlucky to get relegated. It was a pretty lousy season. We were 18th with 12 games to go, 19th the game after that and never moved again until the end of the season.

Boro have also proven quite comprehensively that the Premier League millions can quickly evaporate, if you don't have strict discipline on wages and transfer fees and don't do due diligence about whether players will actually fit in at the club.

Which goes back to my argument about needing a plan in place and sticking to it (unless you have a damn good reason to change it).

 

 

I've never said long term planning guarantees success...but it does mean you're less likely to have to make drastic changes and find yourself in financial strife if things don't go to plan.

 

You said you’d rather stay in the Championship than go up and come back down again. The fact remains that we’d be better off going up, coming back down and spending the money more wisely than “building” another season in the Championship. 


My point also remains regarding the Premier League season. Many are caught up in the *** show that it turned into and that’s understandable but we were 14th in and around December. That half a season, with everything that goes with the Premier League circus, was much more enjoyable than the week to week dirge of the Championship.

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11 minutes ago, Humpty said:

You said you’d rather stay in the Championship than go up and come back down again. The fact remains that we’d be better off going up, coming back down and spending the money more wisely than “building” another season in the Championship. 


My point also remains regarding the Premier League season. Many are caught up in the *** show that it turned into and that’s understandable but we were 14th in and around December. That half a season, with everything that goes with the Premier League circus, was much more enjoyable than the week to week dirge of the Championship.

Yeah easy to forget now, but most pundits fans etc had us down to comfortably stay up about halfway into the season.

Then it all went down the toilet quite rapidly. Even then, we could have stayed up if we'd managed to beat a few more of the sides around us. 

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I’d say there were many factors in why we didn’t stay up. It’s fine margins for the majority of the games and replicating the approach in the championship to the Premier League was always gonna be a risk. 

in comparison to the bottom 3, we conceded 26 to Hull’s 43 and Sunderlands 40 so defensively we weren’t that bad. 
 

We conceded 53 goals all season. These teams conceded more, Sunderland (69), Hull (80!), Watford (68), Burnley (55), Swansea (70), Palace (63), Stoke (56), Leicester (63), West Ham (64), Bournemouth (67)

 

Our problem was and has been for ages, is converting chances. We scored 27 goals all season. And I think that’s where the frustration came in because Karanka didn’t want to deviate away from the solid foundations, but out of the 13 games we drew, I just wonder if we’ve have got 4 wins we’d have stayed up with a more attacking approach. 
 

Recently listening to downing on that podcast there was more stuff happening in the background but stats wise, we weren’t terrible, just toothless in attack. Similar to some of the games under Aitor in the championship. A lack of attacking plan B cost us. 
 

 

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Out of all the reasons, one is most important - appointment of Agnew when we still had a good chance of staying up. We threw in the towel with however many number of games left to go with that decision. Baffles me to this day. 

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22 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:

Out of all the reasons, one is most important - appointment of Agnew when we still had a good chance of staying up. We threw in the towel with however many number of games left to go with that decision. Baffles me to this day. 

Added to that the January signings before hand. If we had spent more we might have got that little bit of extra quality to turn those draws into a win. 
 

I think Agnew coming in would probably be to unite the dressing room after the fractious split with Karanka. It’s so annoying cos at the time we all knew that Agnew = relegation from March onwards. 

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3 hours ago, Neverbefore said:

Out of all the reasons, one is most important - appointment of Agnew when we still had a good chance of staying up. We threw in the towel with however many number of games left to go with that decision. Baffles me to this day. 

Absolutely spot on, we should have brought in a Sam Allardyce type manager just to give us at least a fighting chance. Agnew was another one of Steve Gibsons awful decisions, I would imagine a bollocking from Agnew would be likened to being mauled by a lamb, we might as well have brought in Mary Poppins as his assistant.

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51 minutes ago, Rioch's Braves said:

Absolutely spot on, we should have brought in a Sam Allardyce type manager just to give us at least a fighting chance. Agnew was another one of Steve Gibsons awful decisions, I would imagine a bollocking from Agnew would be likened to being mauled by a lamb, we might as well have brought in Mary Poppins as his assistant.

Mary was actually the outstanding candidate. Her PowerPoint was pure magic allegedly but she refused to move up North from the smoke.

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