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Boro vs Watford 0-1


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I also wish the people suggesting Big Sam would give their heads a shake.

 

Seriously, you want that at our club?

 

He's probably the best chance we have of staying up if it doesn't work out with AK, so yes.

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I also wish the people suggesting Big Sam would give their heads a shake.

 

Seriously, you want that at our club?

 

He's probably the best chance we have of staying up if it doesn't work out with AK, so yes.

 

But his style is worse than what we have now. Plus, he's a crooked *** and it would be an embarrassment.

 

Fans are crying out for more attacking minded football and then they go and suggest Big Sam. Doesn't make sense at all.

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We need 6 points from the next 4 games to get back on track of the 1 point per game ratio. 3 of those games are against ***nal, Man City and Chelsea and the other is against Brounemouth who have just thrashed Hull 6-1. Does anyone see it happening?

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I also wish the people suggesting Big Sam would give their heads a shake.

 

Seriously, you want that at our club?

 

He's probably the best chance we have of staying up if it doesn't work out with AK, so yes.

 

But his style is worse than what we have now. Plus, he's a crooked *** and it would be an embarrassment.

 

Fans are crying out for more attacking minded football and then they go and suggest Big Sam. Doesn't make sense at all.

 

I'm not bothered about the style of play this season tbh, just want to see us winning games and staying up. Big Sam knows this league inside out.

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The thing is we,ve seen his lack of plan B for ages. As a boro fan the thing that hurts is we are in the PL so lets give it a go ,, yes there are going to be teams that will beat us BUT there are alot of teams we should beat at home. If we get relegated but we gave it all we had then ok we wernt good enough. But what will stick in most boro fans throats is if we got relegated and never gave it a good go. I think the team we have IF played right could finish in a good mid table position. But like i said we have seen this for too long now and unless he changes his game then we will drop out of the PL with out even really trying and that will really hurt.

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Just hope there's a new manager in before January, I don't trust AK's judgement on players at all.

 

I dont know how you can say that, Karanka brought in/on all of the stand out players yesterday. Chambers was dictating the defence very well, Foreshaw was the best player in the centre.

 

 

Defensively I think we were as sound as we're going to be this term and we looked a million times more assured than we've seen recently. Thats what they've been working on in the international break.

 

De roon and foreshaw did a good job, though I'm a little underwhelmed about de roon since his price tag. I can see him being dropped for leadboots if/when he comes back or give clayton and foreshaw a run out together again.

 

The biggest issue with our attacking movement I believe is Downing. Yes there's a case for Stuani being dropped etc... but AK does see something there and he does give us some physicality and get himself in to the box often when things are coming in from the other wing.

So why I see Downing as our biggest problem, isnt due to his lack of willingness to take anyone on as a winger, although this is bad, nor is it his default reaction to stop momentum and pass back, which is bad, nor is it his willingness to let the game just drift past him with rarely challenging the ball or winning it back when hee's lost it, which is unforgivable. The reason why I say its Downing thats the biggest problem in our attack, is his possitional play. He's supposedly playing as a right winger, albeit with the license to drift a bit.However regularly, we're looking for outlets on the left and right, Stuani is usually available on the right or somewhere around there, however Downing is never anywhere to be seen. This leaves our main creative outlet being Friend, who dispite his heart, rarely gets a good cross in and should be concentrating on his defensive duties more than anything else. There was a few times I noticed, the ball going out wide, Friend is isolated so we're looking for where downing was and he was hanging around at right back!

 

How are you supposed to create chances when 1/3 of your attacking support players is out of the game for the majority of it?

 

I'd prefer Dimi play on the left at the moment than Downing tbh.

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If AK did go, at this moment in time I'd look at Garry Monk or Gary Rowett. Sam would be further down my list than Strachan.

 

Garry Monk is a great shout, was unfairly sacked at Swansea. I think he did a great job there. Bristol City's boss is another one if we're going to go down the young English manager route. But for as long as AK is manager, we need to support him 100%.

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We need 6 points from the next 4 games to get back on track of the 1 point per game ratio. 3 of those games are against ***nal, Man City and Chelsea and the other is against Brounemouth who have just thrashed Hull 6-1. Does anyone see it happening?

Nope!

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We need 6 points from the next 4 games to get back on track of the 1 point per game ratio. 3 of those games are against ***nal, Man City and Chelsea and the other is against Brounemouth who have just thrashed Hull 6-1. Does anyone see it happening?

 

At this time no

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I bloody wish we'd got Nathan Redmond in the summer, can't believe some didn't want him.

 

I don't think we could have got him ahead of Southampton to be fair.  I don't see how he chooses us ahead of them.

Redmond stated he was over the moon to join Southampton, because he loved their style of attacking football because it suits him, so that rules us out completely.

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I'll chuck my penneth in, I thought we looked decent for periods in the first half without creating many clear chances - which we've never really done this season or last anyway. We faded after going a goal behind and looked like we ran out of ideas. Barragan had a torrid afternoon against a tricky opponent but didn't really get much help. Other than that everyone else was average if unspectacular.

But tbh after today and West Ham, I actually don't think we're a million miles away in terms of general performance and we're probably only 1 or 2 tweaks away from a team capable of winning matches; top of the list for me is dropping stuani, he's still a square peg which for reasons unknown to me wasn't properly addressed in the summer, yes he's an option to get a body in the box but he offers so little in just about every aspect of the game, defensively, offensively and his touch is absolutely diabolical.

Karanka playing him RW feels like we're accepting that we can't create down the right and that puts all the focus on central and left sided areas. I'd like to see Fischer or traore given a start against bournemouth (I'm not going to say against ***nal as trying to change things there isn't really going to be representative).

On the whole I'm with Nics, I see some reasons to be optimistic, even though maybe they're not obvious right now.

 

If you want an honest response to that I'd say you're confusing possession with good play.  They aren't the same thing and we can mess about with the ball as much as you like in the middle third but if there's nothing at the end of it then we won't win games.

 

If we can't beat teams who are playing badly then who are we going to beat and how are we going to beat them?  We're a million miles away because we don't looking capable of hurting anyone.  We didn't against West Ham other than a set piece, which is the only way we scored against Spurs and Palace as well.  We scored from a foul against Everton.  The last genuine goal we scored from open play was Stuani's second against Sunderland.  Unless we can address that then nothing else will matter because we just won't win games.

I'm not confusing possssion and good play at all. What I saw was possession that was potentially on the verge of nearly being kind of threatening... with a couple of half chances. Which tbh is pretty much how we played for large spells of games last year, so it doesn't really surprise or infuriate me anymore.

I genuinely don't believe we are a million miles away, with a few tweaks I think we could do enough to survive, dropping stuani as mentioned being one.

Scoring goals from open play is a concern I totally agree but I kind of expected that at the start of the season. I find a crumb of comfort that we have actually scored goals in this division and we're not getting torn to pieces week in and week out.

I don't know, perhaps Ive just got depressingly low expectations that consist of not losing by more than 1.... :(

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Interesting read this thread. If you'd have scored with the sort of goal we scored and won 1-0, the Watford fans would be up in arms and you'd be happy to grind out a valuable win with hope to push on a bit.

 

You could try playing Negredo and Rhodes together? You can be hard to beat and provide a threat. Yesterday there was very little threat.

 

We were infinitely better than at Burnley but yes, we didn't create much either. Hull, Sunderland and ...... to go down.

 

The result is the important thing at the end of an individual game, of course you're happier with the result. But when you've got a long season left to go, watching the kind of performance either team put in yesterday cannot be anything but worrying. Those kind of goals won't save you all season and there are plenty of better sides than us to play in this division. I remember when we went to Brentford last year and won 1-0, extended our clean sheet streak to 9 games, breaking a record. We were awful and didn't deserve to win. Next game we were dominated again, lost 1-0 with pretty much the last touch of the game and didn't win again for 5 games, playing against teams which should have been fodder.

 

But I have to say, if I was to analyse both team's performances for the full 90, I'd be happier being a Boro fan. We were (and in our squad, still are) missing one or two players to really carve out a good opportunity. But other than that, we dominated the ball and I can only remember the goal and one Success shot which was right at our keeper from your side.

 

As for Negredo and Rhodes together... Karanka will never deviate from his system. He made a big deal out of it last season when we played Blackburn away. We had Rhodes up front with Nugent playing off him, he said we had 2 up front but the fans who were there could see we weren't. We were beaten in that game quite convincingly 2-1 (our goal being a stoppage time non-goal). Aitor made a thing of mentioning it in the press, something about how our fans will be happy to see that we played Nugent and Rhodes together despite the fact we lost and it was intended to be sarcastic. Didn't go down well at the time (just 3 games before he went AWOL) but the performance and result made his point for him.

 

I don't know if we're bad enough to be the other team to go down. We're not creating chances though and that's what worries me. Defensively we've looked okay (but on the back of yesterday, there wasn't much to defend). I don't think you should be spending too much time looking below you either because you've got quality in your squad. If your strikers are firing the way they should be for long enough during the season, you should be fine.

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There is absolutely no surprise in that, its hard to change our style if you don't know how to.

 

The problem Karanka has is Gibbo is watching the same boring dross that we're all watching, Gibbo's a patient man who in the past has shown loyalty to his managers but stupid he isn't and I don't see him showing blind loyalty this time round.

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