Cardiff V Boro 1-4 (Clarke, Azaz, Latte Lath, Gilbert)

[Barnaby 1,164 2.3k]

13 hours ago, Smogzilla said:

Also, Azaz has 11 goals and 10 assists. It's his first season at Championship level and he's had to adjust to a new team halfway through.

If anybody doesn't rate him at this point, I don't know what sport you're watching.

I been saying it...Ain't I been saying it...You now know why Boro nipped in and paid Villa what they wanted and Folk in Plymouth were up in arms...Look at Plymouths strikers now without Azas...Plymouth I think will stay up... if not I'm in for more Pelters & Abuse

[BoroWales 244 250]

17 hours ago, Downsouth said:

At least you are there so well done and i wonder if @BoroWales is in the crowd!

I was there - however I was sat 50 metres away from the Boro fans, behind the goal in the family stand.

My 9 year old wanted to sit with his mates.

I have to say the Boro fans were outstanding all game.

Also, a mate of mine lives in Penarth, posh little town outside Cardiff, bus loads of Boro fans stopped there before the game for a beer and a song; he said they were awesome.

well done all.

UTB

[Plastic Goat 744 1.1k]

Agree entirely. We shot ourselves in the foot so many times this season. Even with our ridiculous amount of injuries we could easily have made the playoffs. Unfortunately defensive frailties have never been a priority.

[Foogle 2,228 3.6k]

14 hours ago, Changing Times said:

I watched the highlights on Sky Sports but you don't really get a feel for the game from them.  I saw Cardiff had a couple of chances, Dieng did well to save the chipped effort but that came from more sloppy play from us I think?  The save from the header was good, looked like he tipped it on to the post?  Gilbert and Lath took their goals well I thought.  It's hard to know what to make of end of season games as you never quite know who is really up for it but it looks like it was a well deserved win either way 👍

First half was a pretty even affair, they should've been 1 up after some bad finishes and a great save from Dieng, but we also had some very good chances. Felt like a typical end of season game without a huge amount of urgency. 

I think our goal on the stroke of half time took the wind out of their sales. Honestly think the scoreline came down to superb finishing on our behalf and Cardiff spurning their chances. 

(We were still definitely the better team mind)

[Irishborofan 33 59]

hope we can hold onto our players for next season. should be challenging for automatic promotion.

[Changing Times 16,078 23.1k]

19 hours ago, LinoJo3 said:

I’d say the season was disappointing from the pov that we’ve been our own worst enemy. We could very easily have made the play offs even if we just halved the amount of ridiculous mistakes we’ve made that led to goals.

The Leeds game for example, their only ‘good’ goal was a yard offside, the Bamford goal just totally summed us up this season, easily avoidable goals that have cost us points.

I don't feel disappointed in the sense that I don't believe this squad is better than where we've finished, if you see what I mean.  I think we're finishing roughly where we'd have expected to.  This isn't really the right thread for it but where I do have disappointment it's in relation to the two transfer windows where I felt we've set ourselves up to not quite be good enough.  And that in turn is where my frustration comes from with regards to this season.  Everyone is bouncing at the moment because we're on a strong run, and as it's close to the end of the season then thoughts naturally turn to the next one, and if we carry this form through next season then we'll be this or that.  However, 11 games is just that really, it's a nice run of form but 46 games gives you a better idea of what you are, and what we are is not quite good enough.  The hope that everyone has is that we've gone a little backwards to go a lot forwards, and this strong run reinforces the belief that things are going to plan.  But we've also all seen teams finishing a season strongly and not then kicking on at all in the next one so there's no guarantee of that.  But yeah I'm not disappointed because to me we are where we should be.  Every team around us can point to games that they 'should' have won and so on but it's about getting it done, and we haven't this season.  So in the summer we will hopefully improve ourselves from a 60-70 point team just not quite good enough for the play offs to a 80+ points team with a good shot at winning promotion.

[Plastic Goat 744 1.1k]

Hope you're right.

[Changing Times 16,078 23.1k]

7 minutes ago, Plastic Goat said:

Hope you're right.

I think the upcoming transfer window will be slightly different to last summer.  We have more depth now so it will be about adding to what we've got to put us over the top.

[LinoJo3 5,823 13.6k]

I agree, I was massively disappointed in the transfer window when it closed. In hindsight it was probably better than I thought at the time, specially considering we only had £10m to cover those positions. However you can also if we had brought in even one more established forward it could have been enough to get those extra 5-10 points that would have got us into the play offs. 
 

On the other hand we could still finish above Coventry who spent £40m in the summer, so we probably have done better than it seems.

Still some of the goals we’ve gave away are nothing to do with transfer windows, it’s not even just that we made the odd mistake, we made the same mistakes repeatedly and seemed to take multiple games to iron them out. Game management can bring in a similar amount of extra points as a slightly better forward who gets an extra 4 or 5 goals, the hull game for example, if we’d have warnocked it for 5-10 minutes and just weathered that storm we could have took the 3 points. It’s the championship, you can’t play perfect football all the time sometimes you have to get down and dirty.

[Downsouth 8,161 39.1k]

21 hours ago, BoroWales said:

I was there - however I was sat 50 metres away from the Boro fans, behind the goal in the family stand.

My 9 year old wanted to sit with his mates.

I have to say the Boro fans were outstanding all game.

Also, a mate of mine lives in Penarth, posh little town outside Cardiff, bus loads of Boro fans stopped there before the game for a beer and a song; he said they were awesome.

well done all.

UTB

Boro fans spread sunshine wherever they go!

[Borodane 7,958 27.6k]

13 hours ago, Changing Times said:

I don't feel disappointed in the sense that I don't believe this squad is better than where we've finished, if you see what I mean.  I think we're finishing roughly where we'd have expected to.  This isn't really the right thread for it but where I do have disappointment it's in relation to the two transfer windows where I felt we've set ourselves up to not quite be good enough.  And that in turn is where my frustration comes from with regards to this season.  Everyone is bouncing at the moment because we're on a strong run, and as it's close to the end of the season then thoughts naturally turn to the next one, and if we carry this form through next season then we'll be this or that.  However, 11 games is just that really, it's a nice run of form but 46 games gives you a better idea of what you are, and what we are is not quite good enough.  The hope that everyone has is that we've gone a little backwards to go a lot forwards, and this strong run reinforces the belief that things are going to plan.  But we've also all seen teams finishing a season strongly and not then kicking on at all in the next one so there's no guarantee of that.  But yeah I'm not disappointed because to me we are where we should be.  Every team around us can point to games that they 'should' have won and so on but it's about getting it done, and we haven't this season.  So in the summer we will hopefully improve ourselves from a 60-70 point team just not quite good enough for the play offs to a 80+ points team with a good shot at winning promotion.

Yeah kind of agree with that. Last summer we brought in quite a few projects and hopefully we can keep hold of players like VdB and Latth who have really acclamised to the league now while Engel and Bangura will have made some valuable experience too. Add to that the keeper situation is sorted and the middle kind of too with Hackney and Azaz and also right wing with Jones. And we have decent defenders coming back in Fry and Lenihan. So if we can keep those players, because we've already made that big sale i Rogers, and then add a few key players like proper DM another quality forward then I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to take an sxtra step and at least get into the playoffs. Maybe a LW if McGree is leaving. A bit more luck on the injury front goes without saying, but every team would like that 🙂 

[Humpty 5,183 10.6k]

13 hours ago, Changing Times said:

I don't feel disappointed in the sense that I don't believe this squad is better than where we've finished, if you see what I mean.  I think we're finishing roughly where we'd have expected to.  This isn't really the right thread for it but where I do have disappointment it's in relation to the two transfer windows where I felt we've set ourselves up to not quite be good enough.  And that in turn is where my frustration comes from with regards to this season.  Everyone is bouncing at the moment because we're on a strong run, and as it's close to the end of the season then thoughts naturally turn to the next one, and if we carry this form through next season then we'll be this or that.  However, 11 games is just that really, it's a nice run of form but 46 games gives you a better idea of what you are, and what we are is not quite good enough.  The hope that everyone has is that we've gone a little backwards to go a lot forwards, and this strong run reinforces the belief that things are going to plan.  But we've also all seen teams finishing a season strongly and not then kicking on at all in the next one so there's no guarantee of that.  But yeah I'm not disappointed because to me we are where we should be.  Every team around us can point to games that they 'should' have won and so on but it's about getting it done, and we haven't this season.  So in the summer we will hopefully improve ourselves from a 60-70 point team just not quite good enough for the play offs to a 80+ points team with a good shot at winning promotion.

I've no issues with the last two transfers windows. We've stuck to our plan and not over extended ourselves. As a club without parachute payments and tight FFP, we have to be diligent in the way we go about things. There are times where we're going to have to gamble but given where we were with are poor start and the relative strength of the league, i thought it was diligent to stick so to speak. It gives us room to have a real run at things next season. There are no guarantees, absolutely right but we've played out of our skin since the middle of February to get to where we are and we're still someway off the play offs, which for me at least demonstrates why we made the right choices in January.

[Rob 6,489 9.9k]

23 hours ago, Plastic Goat said:

Agree entirely. We shot ourselves in the foot so many times this season. Even with our ridiculous amount of injuries we could easily have made the playoffs. Unfortunately defensive frailties have never been a priority.

pretty much everyone is not consistent outside of the top 4, everyone outside of them positions have performed as typical different degrees of inconsistent championship clubs and we are one of that pack this season 

 

easy to pick a few results against the very worst of teams, that start ruined everything where we had just forced lots of new players into the team and was clear that inbetween that and some key injuries we had a team that didn't know each other and performed as such.

some of Carrick's worst mistakes for me were made at this point, maybe his hands were partly forced at that point but he changed from his previous tactic of keeping a steady team that almost picked itself - where even if you were new and better than what we had you had to be slowly brought into the team, and several people were forced in from the start, if I remember it seemed that when we started to get the results back we had pretty much gone back to as much of last years line up as we could at the time.

if we did this from the start where we not forced to bring the new lads in gradually we should of picked up more points during that bad run, people like mcgree having to fight for his place for the likes of silvera (who had got the nod from the start) was even without hindsight a huge error I think on carricks part. the way he played when he did bring him back makes me think we would of picked up a few more points during that spell at the least. too many fishes out of water during that bad run for me.

[Neverbefore 15,138 29.4k]

38 minutes ago, Humpty said:

I've no issues with the last two transfers windows. We've stuck to our plan and not over extended ourselves. As a club without parachute payments and tight FFP, we have to be diligent in the way we go about things. There are times where we're going to have to gamble but given where we were with are poor start and the relative strength of the league, i thought it was diligent to stick so to speak. It gives us room to have a real run at things next season. There are no guarantees, absolutely right but we've played out of our skin since the middle of February to get to where we are and we're still someway off the play offs, which for me at least demonstrates why we made the right choices in January.

If we'd signed a striker in Jan on loan and he did a reasonable job, would we have seen ELL break through in the way that he has? He might have been in and out of the team like he was at the beginning of the season and never got that run going. We would have let the striker (example keifer Moore) go back to his club and we'd be at square one in terms of trying to find a first choice striker. 

It was a blessing in disguise imo. Now we know what latte lath is about we can focus on getting someone who compliments him rather than replaces him. 

[Bruce 3,157 2.5k]

29 minutes ago, Rob said:

that start ruined everything where we had just forced lots of new players into the team and was clear that inbetween that and some key injuries we had a team that didn't know each other and performed as such.

some of Carrick's worst mistakes for me were made at this point,

I think you can give Carrick a fair amount of leeway for the beginning of the season. It is clear that he sticks to the same 11 day in, day out if he can, sometimes to the detriment of keeping a player fresh over a whole 46 game season. One of the silver linings of our injury crisis is that many of our players are actually at peak levels right now due to the limited number of games they've played.

The mistake he made that I am worried about was his thinking against Leeds. The way we set up to attack them was idiotic as was picking Dijksteel to go up against Summerville. For me, that looks like he's learned nothing about when his favoured tactics don't work. Even against Cardiff, we could almost as easily have lost that game 4:3 as won it.