Doubt Boro will have many easier days. That was really terrible for at least an hour. Hadn’t considered Bilic leaving, thought we’d be okay but that was a very worrying performance. Set up wrong, another hamstring injury, very little cohesion, no plan to progress the ball. Could probably find something to criticise in every individual performance today. Pretty down after that.
I've generally been able to see positives most games recently where there's been ideas that haven't happened or just wasteful finishing. Barring Martins' wasted chance, I can't think of any other big chance we missed whilst Boro missed 3 or 4 good chances on top of the two they scored. Bilic set us up to fail with the starting XI today. Kamara was a liability before the suspension, and today was a continuation of that. No idea why Morris was dropped for this dullard as Kamara has not earned it back on merit. Gaspar is good for games where we need an enforcer in midfield but we already had that in Choudhury who is that but more agile. Asprilla should have started to help Koné who was poor today with nobody else in that midfield 3 who can pass it forward. Martins needs to sort his shooting out. It's putting us under pressure in games where we should be at least testing the keeper. I expected a lot more from him so far in all. Davis didn't get any service which I sympathise with, but where was that effort we saw v Norwich where he was willing to work for the team? He was anonymous. Sarr, however? He was not anonymous. He was ****. Absolutely, diabolically **** and if it wasn't for the pricetag he would be rightfully on the bench. He needs to be dropped as we've tried to accommodate him in different positions and systems but he doesn't do anything for 2 or 3 games at a time. Oh yeah, another hamstring injury. Wonderful. 13 Senior players injured now. Boro pressed us really well and they forced mistakes. They are what we aren't; fit, effective and dangerous with a clear idea of what the players should be doing in each phase of play.
There were a couple of things which emphasised the relatively difficult and arbitrary nature of the Championship today. Firstly, Archer appeared to be our top target all summer, but Villa wouldn't release him. Instead we ended up with Davis. Now in January Archer becomes available but Villa wouldn't also send him to us, so instead Boro luckily get him and he's the best player on the pitch in the game vs us. The other one, not quite so much down to luck I guess - why wasn't Carrick ever in the conversation for a potential manager for us in the summer, when we were after someone young and English? I know Kieran McKenna was very much in the picture. It seems either of the former Utd coaches would have likely been a better appointment than who we ended up with.
If Middlesbrough were any good they’d have put 5 past of us I’m consistently staggered at how dense our players are. Bilic is not without fault but I genuinely don’t believe half of that squad is able to execute a tactical plan.
Pozzo is the biggest problem but he’s clearly not going anywhere. Bilic is also a problem but one that can disappear overnight (not in a sinister way). Get someone in who has some fresh ideas and is happy to work with Manga because from the outside looking in I don’t think Bilic is.
A thought I pondered during the second half.. if we were in the premier League and played like that... Concede 6 every game.
Terrble first half but with us lacking 3 or 4 key players and Boro very much on the up under Carrick you can understand why. The senior players went missing again though. I thought second half we were better and Araujo looked lively but with us chasing the game they should have killed us off. I think Adeyemo put a mark on every one of their defenders so fair play for getting stuck in. Another hamstring injury by the look of it, looks like the Nigerian witch doctor is targeting that, in response I will be sacrificing a chicken and drinking its warm blood to overcome the powerful curse being used against us. Any of you that are also versed in the occult please do you own rituals, dont be afraid, step into the fire and we will surely overcome this evil and nefarious manifestation of darkness. I enjoyed the people talking about the cheese making in the second half on the stream I watched, I think they knew some of us were watching.
But this is the recruitment issue to a tee. We have no right to expect anything from a kid shipped halfway around the world to play in a different climate and culture with teammates who speak a different language midway through a season in a pretty robust league. He’s 19. Yeah he shanked that scoreable first half chance but that’ll happen with kids. Same with Kone, who looks increasingly befuddled and is seeing his confidence visibly evaporate with each passing game.
I like Bilic in the main but I am beginning to have my doubts. Which begs the question,what is Pozzo thinking?
Had we scored first, that could of been different. Martins should of at least worked the keeper but shot it so wide of goal I think it hit a lampost outside of the ground. Boro' were either very good today or we were just that bad. I will go with both. We got battered for the first ten minutes and only a good save from Bachmann and a goalline clearance from Choudhury kept it at 0-0. Then we grow into the game, start pressing them and Martins is gifted a wonderful chance to put us ahead. Fluffs it. What happens next? Kamara has a total brain fart, allows the runner to skip past any sort of challenge (if you can it that), and from the resulting attack it's 1-0. We crumbled like a wet paper bag after that, Davis was back, but back to his normal self. Although any supply lines to him were non-existent. Then it's two, with the defence AWOL again and it's game over. Second half was slightly better but the game was long gone by the time we started attacking with any intent. Boro' were happy for us to have the ball and do nothing with it. Sarr was terrible today. Absolute lightweight of a performance and at times I forgot he was on the pitch. Our new wonderkid upfront did look pretty good when he came on just after half time and almost scored soon after. He does look lively but he needs service to create a chance. Another injury, and it was comical that we had Choudhury playing RB towards the end. What a laughing stock we must seem to rest of this division at times. It should of been 3-0 towards the end but they somehow missed a sitter, while we looked happy to rub down the clock. Squad still has the mentality to start games backwards and not go at the opponent from the off. It gives the opposition time to get into gear and setup so we cannot break them down. Middlesbrough deserved the win, I think 2-0 flatters them because they should of won by a lot more. We continue to look downwards rather than upwards and Bilic looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights at times today. Clueless. Team selection was off-kilt and Boro' exposed us with every press they did. Kamara is at fault for the first goal, there is no denying that, but we never looked like scoring, and our attempts at goal with all our "attacking flair" is just not good enough. Worst away performance since Millwall by a long shot. Reading next - don't know what to predict right now. We are either very poor or average who win the odd game by nook or crook. Feel doubly sorry for the fans' today. Long and depressing journey home, they deserved a better performance. Bilic is never going to be safe in his role, but he had no gameplan at all, and especially when we went one down, nothing tactical happened. Poor management, but the team as a whole just couldn't be bothered first half, which is where we lost the game.
Buying in all the youngsters wouldn’t be an issue if our aims were aligned with the reality of doing that, but unfortunately they’re not at all, and we’ll continue to simultaneously churn through head coaches trying to get back to the PL.
Need to get rid of Sarr for whatever we can ASAP. He has become an absolute liability recently. His heart is no longer in it imho.
As for Bilic! Give him a break as he has an impossible injury list to cope with. I actually think he has done reasonably well with what he has had to play with.
Nothing could sum up Edwards reign of terror and his disastrous pre season fitness regime better than the lad we bought two weeks ago tearing his hamstring.
We aren’t that great as it is and these injuries really escalated the problem. It’s getting beyond a joke . No wonder teams like Boro look better than us.
He’s one of the senior players, a full international, he (in theory) knows what it takes to get out of this league and he’s basically phoning it in. Disgraceful. Doesn’t compete for 50/50s and has two go-to moves - run into a blind alley out wide and give the ball away or cut back inside and slam in miles over the bar.
Haha, appreciate it. Unfortunately, for some weird reason I cannot explain, Watford wins set my weekend up nicely and a defeat ruins it for an hour or two!
Moving on from my above comment though, there are still clearly a lot of issues at the club which are down to us - why are so many other Championship sides seemingly so much quicker and sharper than us all over the pitch? Why are we still getting so many hamstring injuries? How much of this is due to poor summer preparation, and how much is due to current staff being incompetent? The fact that Ferreira popped his hammy after just 3 games with us suggests any issues with the medical/fitness/conditioning team that were there in the summer are still here. There's a lot of work for Ubenga and Pozzo to be doing behind the scenes to completely overhaul things there, because it's clearly a massive problem. On to the pitch - Kamara was a shambles twice for the first goal. How long until Sema is back?!?! Also, why was Kamara at RB and Ferreira LB for the second goal? Araujo seemed lively when he came on, but as I suspected and as is often the case when some of our supporters get so strangely hyped over one of our signings (the last example was with Louza), some of you may be getting over-excited. On today's evidence at least, if he's an £80mil player in the making then so is Archer. Bilic will probably see out the season still, but if we don't go up (which seems the most likely occurrence now) then I can't imagine he'll be here next season as one way or another the team isn't firing. Not really sure what else to add. We were just second best all over the pitch today.
By all accounts we were pushing hard for Archer and were favourites, but ultimately Villa didn't want to let him go then. We can't really blame the management for that, it's bad fortune.
Which was the same complaint many had last season about our team. Good to see another lesson has been learnt by the Vicarage Road decision makers. Looking through the match day squad today, 5 are loans, ones only on a short term contract until the end of the season, ones apparently on the verge of being sold to Aberdeen and then you add all the injuries its little surprise theres no cohesion. The whole thing is patched together with youngsters being given a chance due to all the injuries or parachuted in this window with no prior experience of this country or the type of football. A rebuild will be happening at the end of the season regardless of where we finish.
Interesting stat. 18pts off the top 18pts above the bottom three. Could not describe us any better really. Totally mediocre.
