Boro v Swansea City 2-0 (Latte Lath (2) )

[ScarBoro 989 1.3k]

1 hour ago, Changing Times said:

.To be clear, I didn't say that we wouldn't benefit from them the likes of Rogers and Lath being in the side.  What I said was their mere presence alone wouldn't be enough, they'd have had to play better than they had been, which I think is essentially what you are saying here as well?

Not quite. Yes, im saying I think we would benefit from Rogers and Lath being in the side, but my point is that I think they were improving and would have ( Rogers) and will (Lath) continue to improve as time goes by. As far as I can see you seem to be suggesting Lath next season will have equally good and bad spells and overall his performances over the season won’t be better than this year - or at least won’t help us improve much overall. I think he will improve on this year. Equally I think Rogers would have got better and more consistent with us. Isn’t that what Snowblind was saying? As to “wouldn’t be enough”, I agree it wouldn’t have been enough for us to storm the league, but then being firmly in the playoff places (or better) will require improvements in most areas, and they would have/could play their part in that.
with Ayling, it’s a bit chicken and egg. Are we playing better and he looks better because of that, even though he hasn’t improved, or have we improved as a team partly because he is playing better? I feel it is the latter - and that’s down to match fitness and regular games bring out his real standard more than when he started.

[Brunners 8,597 25.1k]

2 hours ago, Changing Times said:

We changed formation for a few games but then we've changed

wtf when did we change back? Could have sworn we were still playing 3atb lol.

[Changing Times 13,018 20.1k]

8 minutes ago, ScarBoro said:

Not quite. Yes, im saying I think we would benefit from Rogers and Lath being in the side, but my point is that I think they were improving and would have ( Rogers) and will (Lath) continue to improve as time goes by. As far as I can see you seem to be suggesting Lath next season will have equally good and bad spells and overall his performances over the season won’t be better than this year - or at least won’t help us improve much overall. I think he will improve on this year. Equally I think Rogers would have got better and more consistent with us. Isn’t that what Snowblind was saying? As to “wouldn’t be enough”, I agree it wouldn’t have been enough for us to storm the league, but then being firmly in the playoff places (or better) will require improvements in most areas, and they would have/could play their part in that.
with Ayling, it’s a bit chicken and egg. Are we playing better and he looks better because of that, even though he hasn’t improved, or have we improved as a team partly because he is playing better? I feel it is the latter - and that’s down to match fitness and regular games bring out his real standard more than when he started.

Essentially yeah although assuming he plays more games then he will score more goals obviously.  I suppose what I'm saying is that he still might be the player who misses good chances, and also potentially goes on runs of form where he looks fantastic rather than a more consistent goal scorer.

I don't see any reason why Rogers would have gotten better over the past two months.  He was playing ok as it was, he created plenty of chances for people, we just didn't take them.  Of course over time he should improve as he's a younger player but I'm saying we didn't see that happening here, and I don't think we'd have seen it between the point he left and now.  He looked rubbish when played up front, he looked decent when played as a 10, with better finishing from other players he'd have had more assists, and with better finishing from him he'd have had more goals.

[Changing Times 13,018 20.1k]

12 minutes ago, Brunners said:

wtf when did we change back? Could have sworn we were still playing 3atb lol.

In between the Blackburn home game and Southampton away game.

[Changing Times 13,018 20.1k]

26 minutes ago, ScarBoro said:

with Ayling, it’s a bit chicken and egg. Are we playing better and he looks better because of that, even though he hasn’t improved, or have we improved as a team partly because he is playing better? I feel it is the latter - and that’s down to match fitness and regular games bring out his real standard more than when he started.

Yeah I do get what you mean by chicken and the egg.  I think it's more the former than the latter, and you think it's more the latter than the former!  I think his real standard is what we've seen across his entire spell here, which is one of the reasons he's no longer deemed to be good enough for Leeds.  That doesn't mean he's a bad player or owt but just that he'll only tend to look good when we look better.  Tommy Smith is similar in that regard in my opinion.

[Downsouth 6,746 36.2k]

Wow these last posts were a lot to take in🤔

[BoroSmoggie 3,164 3.8k]

9 hours ago, Brunners said:

wtf when did we change back? Could have sworn we were still playing 3atb lol.

I noticed in the car back Tees /Drury mentioned Thomas was playing wing back. It was definitely a back 4 though.

[Neverbefore 12,330 26.6k]

7 minutes ago, BoroSmoggie said:

I noticed in the car back Tees /Drury mentioned Thomas was playing wing back. It was definitely a back 4 though.

I think it depends on where the play was. At times we were absolutely playing 3 at the back but other times it was 4. But thats kinda been carricks philosophy since he joined, he's about working where the space is rather than a rigid formation. 

[ScarBoro 989 1.3k]

9 hours ago, Changing Times said:

Yeah I do get what you mean by chicken and the egg.  I think it's more the former than the latter, and you think it's more the latter than the former!  I think his real standard is what we've seen across his entire spell here, which is one of the reasons he's no longer deemed to be good enough for Leeds.  That doesn't mean he's a bad player or owt but just that he'll only tend to look good when we look better.  Tommy Smith is similar in that regard in my opinion.

Probably a bit of both, in truth. I would still rather him than Smith, but I’m not sure about either for next season. Ayling, to me, has more to offer going forward than smith, but I suspect he might be looking for one last long contract and I don’t know if that is wise for Boro. Carrick likes his right full back to get forward a lot, so I hope we are looking for a solid young full back. Someone whose main asset is defending but who has the speed to recover.

[Foogle 2,191 3.6k]

5 hours ago, Neverbefore said:

I think it depends on where the play was. At times we were absolutely playing 3 at the back but other times it was 4. But thats kinda been carricks philosophy since he joined, he's about working where the space is rather than a rigid formation. 

He seems to have gone with one very attacking fullback like Giles and a more defensively solid possession retaining fullback on the otherside whilst he's been here.