Middlesbrough V Sunderland 1-1 (Forss)

[pikerman 1,539 2.5k]

28 minutes ago, Erimus74 said:

The big concern for me is stopping too many needless goals, not sundays, you cant rule out individual errors, just look at Allison yesterday, both goal down to his mistakes. No we just concede far to many goals, we have done since Michael Carrick arrived, which hasnt been addressed, maybe its just down to the system we play 

In my opinion it is down to the system we play which means we have no defensive midfielder to cover the front of the defence and especially when Howson plays as he hasn’t now sadly got the legs to get up and down

[Plastic Goat 744 1.1k]

14 teams have conceded less goals than Boro. 9 teams have scored more. These are not promotion stats. They are not even playoff stats. Carrick needs to wake up and smell the coffee. They are the stats of a going nowhere team.

[Denzel Zanzibar 8,167 15.6k]

22 minutes ago, Downsouth said:

Far too many listening to @Denzel Zanzibar😚

What do you mean by this, Al?

[wilsoncgp 10,212 20k]

14 minutes ago, Plastic Goat said:

14 teams have conceded less goals than Boro. 9 teams have scored more. These are not promotion stats. They are not even playoff stats. Carrick needs to wake up and smell the coffee. They are the stats of a going nowhere team.

We've had an inconsistent season. I'm honestly shocked anyone expected anything different this season. Hoped for, sure, we all hoped it would be better and will continue to hope as such. But seems like some people saw us finish 4th last season and just assumed we should be right up there again this season. We lost key loan players, we made one significant sale and our reinvestment was very much focused on longer term success. The teams that came down are significantly stronger than what went up. So I'm really not convinced it's Carrick who needs to wake up and smell the coffee. I think maybe some people need to take a step back and compare the two squads he's been given to work with and the competition we're going up against.

That's not to say he's perfect but a bit of 'benefit of the doubt' wouldn't go amiss, he's still doing a reasonable enough job in the circumstances.

[LinoJo3 5,820 13.6k]

3 hours ago, Neverbefore said:

 

O brien very clearly sees the man coming through the middle and goes to block the passing space. He can't cover that AND the man behind him. Anyone criticising him for that is being ridiculously harsh

The two defenders track the same run (the man closest) and that leaves the player at the back post free.

Honestly watching it back again there I’d say the defending is mostly fine in the situation we were in. There is a man on him by the time he’s took his touch and a man coming at him from behind. He’s going no where, all he could really do was a hit and hope, definately keeper error.

I agree more with the guy that mentioned game management, should Engel have been where he was while we’re 1-0 up with about 5 min to go? 
 

I’m kinda hoping we make a behind the scenes change in summer to help us be a bit more ruthless in defence. What that would be I don’t know, it’s to hard to say without knowing what happens on the training ground. Who organises the defence, who does defensive drills etc? 
 

If it’s all Carrick then we just have to hope he adapts and becomes a bit less naive, if we’d have karankad the last 10 minutes of that game we would have won. Those kind of 1-0s you pick up are just as if not more important than the 3 or 4-0 walk in the park games in this division.

We done it against Leicester, Villa and Chelsea so we know we have that kind of set up available. Maybe it’s a pride thing or an over confidence thing thinking we don’t need it against championship teams. It’s not like we have to be backs to the wall from kick off, just to see out games.

I am confident Carrick will adapt, he has in other areas and he’s not stupid. He will see where we’ve dropped points and where we’ve made mistakes. Hopefully he lets the other coaches have a say and listens to them.

[Neverbefore 15,135 29.4k]

4 minutes ago, LinoJo3 said:

Honestly watching it back again there I’d say the defending is mostly fine in the situation we were in. There is a man on him by the time he’s took his touch and a man coming at him from behind. He’s going no where, all he could really do was a hit and hope, definately keeper error.

I agree more with the guy that mentioned game management, should Engel have been where he was while we’re 1-0 up with about 5 min to go? 
 

I’m kinda hoping we make a behind the scenes change in summer to help us be a bit more ruthless in defence. What that would be I don’t know, it’s to hard to say without knowing what happens on the training ground. Who organises the defence, who does defensive drills etc? 
 

If it’s all Carrick then we just have to hope he adapts and becomes a bit less naive, if we’d have karankad the last 10 minutes of that game we would have won. Those kind of 1-0s you pick up are just as if not more important than the 3 or 4-0 walk in the park games in this division.

We done it against Leicester, Villa and Chelsea so we know we have that kind of set up available. Maybe it’s a pride thing or an over confidence thing thinking we don’t need it against championship teams. It’s not like we have to be backs to the wall from kick off, just to see out games.

I am confident Carrick will adapt, he has in other areas and he’s not stupid. He will see where we’ve dropped points and where we’ve made mistakes. Hopefully he lets the other coaches have a say and listens to them.

If we'd scored and sealed the 3 points from his cross then not a single soul would be questioning why he was up there. So I don't have a critical thing to say about him there. Its the players behind him that should be covering his position that the question marks are over.

[LinoJo3 5,820 13.6k]

9 minutes ago, wilsoncgp said:

We've had an inconsistent season. I'm honestly shocked anyone expected anything different this season. Hoped for, sure, we all hoped it would be better and will continue to hope as such. But seems like some people saw us finish 4th last season and just assumed we should be right up there again this season. We lost key loan players, we made one significant sale and our reinvestment was very much focused on longer term success. The teams that came down are significantly stronger than what went up. So I'm really not convinced it's Carrick who needs to wake up and smell the coffee. I think maybe some people need to take a step back and compare the two squads he's been given to work with and the competition we're going up against.

That's not to say he's perfect but a bit of 'benefit of the doubt' wouldn't go amiss, he's still doing a reasonable enough job in the circumstances.

Fully agree not to mention the injuries. How can you complain about x amount of teams scoring more goals than us and not mention we’ve had no fit striker for weeks. Even Forrs is only in his 3rd game back I think, plus our best player in the 3 behind has played about 5 games all season.

[RiseAgainst 5,004 4.1k]

Do you know what the last ten minutes of yesterday's match needed? Matt Clarke. Instead of bringing Silvera on, we should have deployed Clarke as a third CB. Then the fullbacks could have continued bombing on for as long as they had the energy, and we'd have had an extra body to defend (with some flair) when Sunderland came at us, as everyone knew they would.

Carrick has already done what many of us demanded by switching to a five at the back in certain starting lineups. If he starts switching from a four to a five when we're defending a lead, it could be worth quite a few points over the remainder of this season.

[LinoJo3 5,820 13.6k]

5 minutes ago, Neverbefore said:

If we'd scored and sealed the 3 points from his cross then not a single soul would be questioning why he was up there. So I don't have a critical thing to say about him there. Its the players behind him that should be covering his position that the question marks are over.

That’s the thing though, if Engel is going to be up there then the team has to shift the shape to get up and support him. I’m not blaming Engel for making the run or crossing, it’s his instructions to do that. Howson is clearly the guy who’s job it was to cover, O’Brien rightly goes with the man running through the middle and Howson suddenly sees the danger and tries to get back.

But as I said, after he’s took his first touch we have him contained enough that 9/10 times he wouldn’t score. The ONLY way he could have scored from that situation would have been to hit it early which is what he did, had he took another touch we’d have probably won the ball back. So while the defending did leave him in a huge amount of space we did kind of compensate as well as can be expected, maybe Howson could have been a bit closer.

[Erimus74 5,353 5.5k]

43 minutes ago, pikerman said:

In my opinion it is down to the system we play which means we have no defensive midfielder to cover the front of the defence and especially when Howson plays as he hasn’t now sadly got the legs to get up and down

Agree, but shouldnt that be something Carrick should be adresssing 

[pikerman 1,539 2.5k]

23 minutes ago, Erimus74 said:

Agree, but shouldnt that be something Carrick should be adresssing 

He should but I am giving Carrick and his coaches a free pass for this season due to the absentees and injury list, if it continues next season then we have a deep seated problem 

[LinoJo3 5,820 13.6k]

3 minutes ago, pikerman said:

He should but I am giving Carrick and his coaches a free pass for this season due to the absentees and injury list, if it continues next season then we have a deep seated problem 

The thing about Carricks system is the total opposite to what we’re used to. We’ve spent years watching Pulis, Warnock, Karanka types of cautious managers. We were solid and hard to break down, but when we needed to attack the flaws of the team were quickly exposed.
 

In Carricks first few months here most of us couldn’t believe it that when we went a goal down it no longer felt like we’d already lost. We were so used to being practically beaten in the past.

Carricks system however will highlight any flaws or weak links defensively. In a defensive role in this team you basically get one shot to do your defensive job, if you fail then it’s going to be noticed, there isn’t the support and cover there that were used to seeing under previous managers.

I think in part as supporters we just have to accept it as what will happen if we want this kind of football. Though I do also think there are things the coaches can do to mitigate it as much as possible. The club also have a job to do by giving him some proper quality to work with, playing this kind of system with players that arent quite there yet will always be a struggle.

[Smogzilla 9,473 7.1k]

Defensive lapses are incredibly frustrating.

But if I had to choose between this brand of football or whatever Pulis or Warnock served up. I would choose this style 100 times out of 100.

[HoyteForLeftBack 228 2.7k]

Does anyone know what the Cleveland police sign was about in south stand?

[TeaCider24 18,385 23.4k]

2 minutes ago, HoyteForLeftBack said:

Does anyone know what the Cleveland police sign was about in south stand?

Police heavy handedness at the Hartlepool v York match, I think.