Middlesbrough vs Derby 4-1 (Buchanan og, Connolly, Crooks, Watmore)

[Naisby 736]

3 minutes ago, Rioch's Braves said:

I'd want to keep Jones I honestly don't believe Spence wants to stay and if that is the case then an unhappy player is no good to us regardless of how good he is. 

Unless we get promoted and no one from a London based club bids enough for him don’t expect to ever see Spence in a Boro shirt again. He went to forest to get away from Boro and show himself off. 

He only signed for us because we were the best of a very short list of suitors, he wants to live in London and believes he is good enough for the premier league. On paper Spence would be great for our first team but he doesn’t want to play for us unless we are in the Premier League.

[Woof Woof 84]

10 minutes ago, Rioch's Braves said:

I'd want to keep Jones I honestly don't believe Spence wants to stay and if that is the case then an unhappy player is no good to us regardless of how good he is. 

Yup. If he doesn't want to play for Boro, that's another matter.

[Naisby 736]

9 minutes ago, TeaCider24 said:

I'd somehow missed this yesterday, I love that banner.

Shame they used a colour you can barely see for the first letters, but other than that it's clever.

Not sure but maybe trying to keep the colour scheme for the message Black and White

[Dan1234 1,054]

27 minutes ago, sanddancer said:

How much would we pay for replacements given the aim is promotion. That to me is false economics. 

It's only false economy if you blow the money on sh#te. 

I don't think you look to replace someone like Jones like for like. But say our recruitment is on point (big if I know) and you spend his 20m on two quality wingbacks and a striker maybe you improve as a team? I don't think any championship team can do much about prem teams picking their best players no matter how much we want Jones to stay. 

[Borodane 6,298]

1 hour ago, Woof Woof said:

I'd like to see Boro keep both. I know some here wouldn't miss Spence but I remember his good games and think he'd come in handy... and how much would Boro need to spend to get anyone better?

Anyway. I hope both stay.

We already have someone who is better in Jones. No point in having one of them sit on the bench. If Jones was a lwb then great but he has never played that position so it’s a gamble to shift him over there. 

[sanddancer 1,967]

1 hour ago, Dan1234 said:

It's only false economy if you blow the money on sh#te. 

I don't think you look to replace someone like Jones like for like. But say our recruitment is on point (big if I know) and you spend his 20m on two quality wingbacks and a striker maybe you improve as a team? I don't think any championship team can do much about prem teams picking their best players no matter how much we want Jones to stay. 

As the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Basically we know what we have but with a new player there is a risk. So it all depends on what the short and long terms plans are along with risk appetite. 
Assume we raise £20 million for a player and lefts say for argument sake invest £10 million on a new player. In theory that’s £10 million up, but unfortunately the plan was promotion and failed costing £100,s of millions over three years.
In theory the player may want to leave or we could fail anyway even by keeping players but that’s not the point.  
Is the club a selling club or does it have have serious ambitions and on that point we should remember the statement about having a club the town could afford, so on that note a offer may be readily accepted but it will effectively communicate what we can expect from the club. 
If automatic promotion is the goal we need both players and players of equal or better stature if that is the goal. 
The thing is we don’t and won’t know what SG and CW really want until the end of the season. 

[p_mards 1,365]

It was a massive win yesterday. Beforehand I had an awful feeling about the match so I'm relived that we managed to take all three points. Derby were really lackluster as I expected a lot more from them, especially considering their wins against the better sides in the division. While we weren't our most fluent in possession, the few flashes of cohesion and moments of quality from Jones for all of his crosses and Balogun's clever backheel were decisive. A huge positive is that we're able to consistently win without playing at our best.

The patient build up to our third goal was very impressive. Jones had two previous opportunities to take on their left sided player but decided to pass the ball and wait to the ball to come back to him in a more dangerous area; which he took full advantage of with him breezing past an isolated Thompson when their team dropped narrow and deep due to our sustained pressure. It's terrifying quite how good he is at RBW. 

The front two of Connolly and Balogun showed huge positives also. Both seem to have have caught up with the pace and dealt with the ugly side of being a striker a lot better. Wilder will be delighted to see them starting to make good progress. Connolly in particular worked incredibly hard, was aggressive and brave. The way Connolly put himself about reminded me of a young Nugent with the way he was an absolute pest and a nuisance for defenders. Balogun in the left sided striker position is very good at dropping wide and deep to help the team build up attacks down the left flank with Taylor and Tavernier moving forward. His link up in tight areas is very neat and clever. It's in them areas where we really need a good technical striker - and why someone like Ikpeazu just couldn't play that style of play effectively. Another added bonus of Connolly and Balogun impressing is that it takes off some of the heat on Wilder to regularly play Sporar if we're hesitant to activate his purchase clause if he scores 15 league goal - such as if we're thinking it's an inflated fee and would prefer to negotiate a much lower deal in the summer.

McGree looked really impressive when he came on. He looked technically very good and again, brave and aggressive. All three of our January signings that played yesterday - McGree, Connolly & Balogun - really impressed and you can definitely see what they add to us. McGree is needed to be an important player when Crooks and Howson get a two match suspension for reaching 10 yellow cards, so him slotting in so seamlessly yesterday is a big positive. 

[Borodane 6,298]

Also I'd just like to give Tav a mention. Thought he was really good yesterday and is just so important to the way we play. Just a shame that he doesn't get amongst the goals but he makes our game tick and makes the other players better. I think him and Jones are our two best players when we have the ball. When we don't have the ball it's probably Tav and Fry. The lad never tires and is always either chasing the ball or making himself available.

[sanddancer 1,967]

15 hours ago, Naisby said:

Unless we get promoted and no one from a London based club bids enough for him don’t expect to ever see Spence in a Boro shirt again. He went to forest to get away from Boro and show himself off. 

He only signed for us because we were the best of a very short list of suitors, he wants to live in London and believes he is good enough for the premier league. On paper Spence would be great for our first team but he doesn’t want to play for us unless we are in the Premier League.

I appreciate and respect anyone with aspersions and will to put the effort in. 
Naisby you make a lot of statements in the post claiming to know more about the situation then I have read and request links to your claim. 
I find it highly unlikely we didn’t have a say in where he went and for how long. Possibly he did only sign for us as the better option of little interest and I accept the fact no one thought him of value.
I think it a case it’s more likely we didn’t play him then he didn’t want to play for us which counters not wanting to play for us unless in the Premiership but are we aware of the fact, are Forest? 
Spence is on loan until the season end and it will be interesting to see if we put him up for sale and who is interested at what value, but until then I think people are just speculating and making assumptions. CW made a statement on why he allowed Spence to remain on loan which I believe was mutual agreed. 
On that note, London attracts a great deal of footballers which is why we are scouting the abundance of young players from the city. 

 

[Duvel 2,446]

16 hours ago, Naisby said:

Unless we get promoted and no one from a London based club bids enough for him don’t expect to ever see Spence in a Boro shirt again. He went to forest to get away from Boro and show himself off. 

He only signed for us because we were the best of a very short list of suitors, he wants to live in London and believes he is good enough for the premier league. On paper Spence would be great for our first team but he doesn’t want to play for us unless we are in the Premier League.

I haven't watched much of Spence at Forest but its hard to imagine him being any more effective if he came back than Jones is. 

With how good Jones' form is its an absolute no brainer to sell Spence. However if we have aspirations of going up we need to hold onto Jones, you could argue that we'd be midtable without him at the moment. 

[AnglianRed 6,320]

1 hour ago, Borodane said:

Also I'd just like to give Tav a mention. Thought he was really good yesterday and is just so important to the way we play. Just a shame that he doesn't get amongst the goals but he makes our game tick and makes the other players better. I think him and Jones are our two best players when we have the ball. When we don't have the ball it's probably Tav and Fry. The lad never tires and is always either chasing the ball or making himself available.

Definitely.

He may not do the attention-grabbing stuff he used to under Warnock, but he's always there when we get forward, trying to keep things moving and isn't scared of doing the dirty work, chasing back and wining the ball.

 

Edited February 14, 2022 by AnglianRed

[SouthernSmoggie 4,242]

56 minutes ago, Borodane said:

Also I'd just like to give Tav a mention. Thought he was really good yesterday and is just so important to the way we play. Just a shame that he doesn't get amongst the goals but he makes our game tick and makes the other players better. I think him and Jones are our two best players when we have the ball. When we don't have the ball it's probably Tav and Fry. The lad never tires and is always either chasing the ball or making himself available.

Three games in a row he's been immense. 

I also think Tav would be way more involved in goals if he had a Jones at LWB. He must look over with a tad of envy at the attacking triangles Crooks gets to create from his position! 

[estonpidge 1,449]

We're not going to change to a back 4 so that Spence can play behind Jones, Spence doesn't want to be here (allegedly) and the money raised from his sale (£10-20m depending on who's valuation you take) should allow us to bring in 3-5 players depending on where we go shopping. If we can pick them up on free's then that's a lot of wages covered.

I can't see Spence signing a new contract or playing for us again even if we got promoted so best we cash our chips in and move on.

[Redcar Rioja 5,974]

Tav is emerging into a latter day Bolo Zenden albeit in different roles. Wilder has reworked Tav putting him in a new role to make the team tick and not to be an expected goal scorer. I think having the burden of his poor finishing taken off his shoulders to be replaced by his natural energy levels in winning back possession, setting up attacks and getting back defensively putting in key tackles and interceptions has saw the emergence of the skills and talent that many had believed but frustratingly never came to fruition. He is becoming a key part and vital to this teams improvement which is no mean feat considering the mixed views on him for several seasons.

Lets hope he keeps it up, there are really positive signs that a beautiful Swan is emerging from the once ugly Duckling.

[Smogzilla 7,482]

Interesting to read Rooney's comments about the tactics of the game. He admitted they had a tactic to hit it long and have two runners chase in behind our defence, which didn't work. It seemed to happen 3/4 times in the game and each time a CB got back in time or Lumley rushed out to sweep.

He also said that they had come up with plans to neutralise Jones which completely failed as well. Encouraging to me that teams are struggling to come up with ways to disrupt our system!