Thank you Selwynoz for the excellent Headliner.
The statistics were very interesting and I assume, because the top three have garnered more points than usual, that has allowed the likes of Boro to be mathmatically still in touch with sixth place. Amazing after a relatively so, so season
I think we will do well to get a result at Hull.
Leeds and Ipswich will just have too much for us to get anything. But who knows with Typical Boro.
@Pedro de Espana
oddly enough Norwich and Coventry are currently set to easily break the 76 point barrier for sixth spot which has only been beaten three times in twenty years. I wonder if this happens every year but the intensity of the fight for relegation/promotion/playoffs means that teams drop points in unexpected ways. Rather like last year when Millwall drawing their last home game meant that they missed the playoffs and let Sunderland in.
we can but hope …..and keep on winning.
UTB
@malcolm I don't like Bernie! I played a five-a-side match with my Finnish mates against Jim Platt's team about 10 years ago. I am a centre back and Bernie made me look like an amateur. Wait a minute - he was a professional and younger than me. And I have never been coached but played longer than him!
Seriously, I love Bernie! I really do. We had a nice chat in the changing rooms after the shower. I also met him after the last match I went to at Riverside.
To me, Bernie's accent is difficult. And he speaks far too quickly, too. And some of his podcasts are too informal and with noise in the background.
I know he is from Glashow but has lived in Newton under Roseberry for years. But he has not picked up the local accent yet.
Up the Boro!
11 minutes Norwich 1 up at Shef Wed.
Come on BORO.
@exmil well well well.
The owls have pulled back the canaries to 2 goals apiece to upset the pecking order ...
Interesting results tonight in the championship, seems those at the top are getting a bit nervous 🤔.
Come on BORO.
If we're waiting to be put out of our misery, it looks like we're going to have to wait a little bit longer.
End of season jitters coming through in a big way. What were the odds of Norwich losing a two goal lead against Sheffield Wednesday.
every game is a huge game now and a lot of clubs are still in danger at the bottom.
we just have to win.
UTB
That's another top opener from you Selwynoz with a complete detailed analysis of the play-off situation. After the international break we were away for Easter so didn't resume on footballing matters and then with a glorious 24 degree early summer day last Saturday, watching Boro tackle Swansea in a fading campaign on the laptop didn't seem a strong enough reason to stay indoors.
Still, Boro have continued to bank the points with a weakened team and somehow are still dangling that remote tantalising prospect of winning every game and sneaking into the play-offs. I guess the real test starts tonight away at Hull followed by a trip to Ipswich and the home encounter with Leeds. Whether the rivals will continue to drop points is another matter but mathematically we're still within the statistical possibilities.
Though what is frustrating about this season is just how long it took Michael Carrick to realise that his team needed to tighten up and stop conceding avoidable goals - since switching to a back-three against Norwich and deploying Lewis O'Brien as something of a midfield destroyer, it's been just 2 goals conceded in the last 7 games and no defeats and just 4 dropped points.
It was actually instigated after fears of being drawn into a relegation battle as Boro continued to slip down the table. This conversion to the hard truth of reality in the Championship has perhaps come a little too late to sneak into the play-offs but I recall doing some analysis a while back showing how few points Boro had achieved when conceding 2 goals, which had becoming a common occurrence.
Sadly, Carrick has spent most of the season thinking he could play the same way as last season but without Akpom, Archer and Ramsey - he's barely had one fit striker this campaign but still hoped his team would blow the opposition away. At least he's learned the hard lesson but if I think of all those points dropped against struggling teams then it has shown if your team can't keep the opposition out then there's little hope of winning enough points for a play-off push.
Anyway, I'll watch tonight's game and see if Boro continue with what has now ironically become automatic promotion form and another win will take them top of the 8-game form table above Ipswich our next opponents.
Thanks. It's always fun to speculate even if it very rarely turns out as one would like. It's hard to believe and a real slap in the face for all the pundits who have absolutely written us off, but a win tonight would put us seventh.
I think that Coventry have an incredibly difficult run in and they started on the wrong foot last night. Norwich have an easier set of games and we may end up relying on teams driven by relegation desperation to take points off them although a Norwich defeat at Preston on Saturday would certainly be a good start to the chaos. Maybe Preston are the shock team.
Of course, we are sure to mess it up but I would like to see the run continue for a game or two just to watch the reactions.
UTB
Here's a link to that statistical analysis of Boro's season that I posted 10 games ago
https://diasboro.club/forum/2023-24/leicester-v-boro/#post-28227
This was my conclusion...
So in conclusion, Boro's form this season and probably over the last 46 games is mid-table at best and the main problem is that the team are conceding far too many goals to have a chance at winning games - especially since they are also no longer scoring as many as they did last season. What Michael Carrick and the those at the club need to do is establish why so many goals are being conceded and whether this is a direct result of the way the team is being set up to play.
Interestingly, the earlier quote of how Carrick set up the team against Leicester at the Riverside indicates that deep down he knows it's possible to set his team up to prevent the opposition scoring. Perhaps there is a balance to be found between the slick Man City style that Carrick ultimately aspires to and a more solid style that the actual players he has at his disposal are more comfortable with. At the moment it seems that the experiment of emulated the best teams in the PL is falling short. Injuries have no doubt taken their toll but that's par for the course in the attritional Championship plus time on the training pitch to hone slick passing is restricted.
It's almost time to start planning for next season and work out a new plan!
Shall I look at the stats ? Nah
Will I do an analysis of form ? Nah
A projected league table? Nah
I know !
A certain winner !
BORO3 !!!!
OFB
Just seen that Dickie Rooks has passed away age 83. Great centre half in the sixties.
OFB - I'd be surprised with BORO 3, but delighted. Three points would be good, whatever the score.
And I agree with what I think Werder is saying: the upturn in BORO's form followed adopting a more "sensible" policy of tightening up the defence and, particularly, using the Man City "ticky tacky, slick passing out of defence tactics" when it seemed appropriate rather than at all times. As has been said on here before, there is a time and a place for those passing tactics - passing short to a player in his own penalty area who has opposing players closing in on him is NOT always a good idea whereas doing the same in an attacking position may be different. Play the percentages. Sometimes it's best to boot the ball out of play or 60 yards upfield rather than trying to dribble or pass into/out of one's own penalty area. Of course if BORO had players the same quality as ManC, Real Madrid or Arsenal players, that might be different.
And @Jarkko, it isn't only people from Finland who might sometimes have difficulties understanding Bernie when he talks. The Glasgow/Clydeside accent can be one of the strongest, most impenetrable, of UK accents. There are, as you know, many different accents of spoken English in the UK. This comes as a surprise to many Americans who presumably believe that everyone speaks a version of Received Pronunication (RP) (sometimes known as BBC English or Oxford English) which would probably have been described as the way in which typical South East of England educated and often professional people, usually upper or middle class people, spoke English, certainly from the fee-paying schools and older universities. It would have been easily understood by everyone who understood English whereas the accents of the large cities (Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle) had their own accents that could be very strong indeed and hardly understood by "outsiders". More recently there has been a loosening of the tie of RP to its role as the accepted manner of speech engaged by professionals or broadcasting organisations and gentle versions of Yorkshire, well-to-do Geordie,and various Scots accents can be heard all across the broadcast media in the UK. But heavy accents remain more difficult for others to understand so it remains a sort of RP with regional tweaks that carries the baton for spoken English in the UK in the 2020s.
People DO change their accents as they grow older and there is a sort of "code switching" that people sometimes use. The accent someone might employ when, for example, representing a client before a Judge in court, or when talking to a grandparent, may be different from the accent that person might slip into when on holiday with the friends one grew up with decades ago. We are not always aware of accents unless they are strong ones. I think my family only got a telephone when I was away at University and it was only when talking on the phone to my grandmother (who at that time was living with my family) that I realised she had a Welsh accent. My wife's parent were both from Scotland and although my father-in-law had attended St Andrews he had a Glasgow accent and my mother-in-law a sort of central belt accent, even though they had lived on Teesside for maybe 45 (?) years or more, before returning to live in the North West Highlands in about 2010.
A lot more attention was paid to accents in previous decades. Sometimes it was a means of keeping people as outsiders, knowing their likely background and educational history virtually as soon as they spoke. But that is greatly diminishing. Providing they can be understood (so that may be avoiding a really thick version of an accent or using dialect words), there is no reason why people with a regional accent of English shouldn't be perfectly able to read the news on the BBC, or speak in court or from the pulpit. In fact during WW2 the BBC often used Wilfred Pickles with his Yorkshire accent to read the news - it sounded "friendly" and would have been difficult for Germans to mimic.
Some accents had always been thought of as more "acceptable" or prestgious than others. That is declinding in the UK. But, yes, Bernie has not always been the easiest to understand, even for us here near Teesside!
@mw-in-darwin - Sorry to hear about Dickie Rooks. It's funny how memory gets us and it has been about 55 years since he wore the BORO shirt, but I don't remember Dickie being particularly tall for a centre half. Of course, they have to be at least 6ft 4inches now, by law.
Selwynoz,
A brilliant opener perfectly in keeping with the quality of yours and others throughout the season. I love a good stat and was intrigued with the ones you researched and highlighted. Top work.
As I posted a little while back at the start of this excellent run of results, I'm a little less enthused and convinced by Boro's new tactical approach. That's not to say that Carrick was wrong to do it or that it hasn't worked but just that I think, as I said those weeks ago, it has reduced the outcome of games to moments for or against us. We witnessed that once again at the weekend as this time Latte Lath produced a couple of moments of individual brilliance to win us the game. Otherwise, there was little in it, just as there hasn't been in the majority of games during the run.
Is it the wrong approach? Not right now. We don't have the players to control the game in the way that I think Carrick really wants and his preferred style has proven to be too risky with this, albeit depleted, group.
But is it the right approach for next season and beyond? I say no. We can't and won't continue to be on the right side of the fine margins over a 46 game season. Clearly that means we need better players in certain areas to make plan A work.
Of course, if the summer recruitment does not go well and Carrick does not get the players he needs to play a controlling game, then we may as well continue to go for the more "grinding out" sort of approach and hope the moments fall our way often enough.
Whatever your view, we'll all be watching Kieren Scott's every move over the summer with interest.
Though it might not be comfortable to admit it, there is one counter point to the argument that it is the change in approach that has reaped the recent rewards: Maybe the reason we have seen an upturn is because the pressure is off.
After the defeat to Stoke, any hopes of promotion were banished. At that point we were more concerned with relegation. We did change to a back three but was the real reason for the improvement that the pressure was off? We've done well in those kind of free hit games this season (Villa, Chelsea at home, Leicester twice, Southampton etc). We all assume that's because we tightened up but it could just as well have been because the players played under no pressure to win.
If we now don't get the results in the coming games against Hull, Ipswich and Leeds even though we've tightened up, will that be because they are simply better than us, it will it be because the play-off spots have remerged as some kind of possibility, and the pressure is turning up again?
One to ponder.
My personal view is that there are seven better teams than us in the division this season, then Hull who I'm not sure about. I think we're better than Preston to be honest. So a 7th or 8th placed finish seems likely and quite fair to me.
I'd take 6th though. Come on Boro.
@forever-dormo To a large extent, I’d agree that there has been, of late, more acceptance of accents, but the prejudice is still there as this article shows: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/aamelia-coburn-ignorances-of-north-east-accent-bias/
I remeber my first trip to the Boro in 1980. I was able to write in English and listen quite fluently to BBC World Service. But listening to the local people on Teesside was difficult on the first trip.. Especially the older people like parents of my friends back then.
Still, my wife has some problems with the local accent, I get on better now but I also use English quite a lot at work. So I talk more than my wife on the trips to Boro as she needs to concetrate more on listening to understand the accent.
I think it is not as thick as it was in 1980's. Or perhaps my English has improved. But, boy it was difficult at first. So thanks both @dormo and @Martin on your comments and the link.
I will predict a 0-2 win for us tonight. I hope we can keep our hopes alive until the Leeds match at Riverside. Then it would become really tense if our hopes would still be alive.
Mind, Hull have a game in hand over us. So a defeat or a draw is not so bad for them. But surely they would like to win, too.
Looking forward to watching the match tonight. I have been to watch Boro once at Hull with HalifaxP. We also saw Rhys Williams in the stands as he was injured back then (a great player who was injured far too often). Boro won back then at Hull. Up the Boro!
@martin-bellamy I listened to Amelia Coburn on Spoty now. I liked hier songs and must listen more while driving next time. This week I have mainly driven in Lithuania.
Is she any way related to our Josh? Or from Richmond? Up the Boro!
EG reporting team announcements delayed 15 mins as both teams delayed getting to the ground; no news yet if ko delayed. 😎
RvDB starts tonight with Barlaser dropping to the bench. Engel replaces Roberts. No HH on the bench! 😎
Hard one to judge defence versus attack - truth is Boro had been failing at both ends and with no real reliable goalscoring options then only tightening up the defence was a possible solution.
It would be great if Boro find better striker options in the summer - look at Ipswich, they average over 2 goals a game and have almost identical defensive record as Boro - as do Southampton. The club never replaced Akpom, Archer or Ramsey and when Rogers came good he was sold.
It was never going to be like last season given the choices available so it was more tactical persistence in the hope of something eventually clicking but nobody really stepped up and if they did were quickly injured again.
I suspect next season's style of play will (should) be determined by what strikeforce we end up with in the summer - Latte Lath isn't reliable enough and can't really hold the ball or indeed has the touch to create assists so I wouldn't pin next season's hopes on him. Much to ponder in the summer in recruitment!
Team News...
As KP mentioned RvdB returns - presumably pushing Howson back into midfield - plus Engel gets the nod at left wing-back. Also Bangura returns on the bench!
@martin-bellamy and @Jarkko - If I may dip my toe further into accents and, particularly, into the link kindly provided by Martin about Amelia Coburn...
It is a truth universally acknowledged* that if a quotation in English is referenced, there is a 90% probability that it comes from George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde or William Shakespeare (or alternatively from the Bible or The Book of Common Prayer), so frequently are they quoted. The thing about Shaw and Wilde** is that they were both born in Ireland - Wilde losing his Irish acccent shortly after starting at Oxford University (he studied Greats there at Magdalen College, having already graduated with prizes after reading Classics at Trinity College, Dublin). Shaw retained an Irish lilt to what appears to modern ears (if you listen to recordings) a very upper class RP accent. But accents change over time - compare her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II when newly on the throne with the way she spoke 70 years later. Shaw (born in 1856) moved to England in 1876 and never returned to live in Ireland.
I brought up Shaw because he wrote the play "Pygmalion" which premiered on the stage (in Vienna!) in 1913 and later became the film of the same name in 1938 and was converted in 1956 into a stage musical "My Fair Lady" and its film version "My Fair Lady" in 1964. Pygmalion/My Fair Lady is all about Eliza, a cockney flower-girl whose speech is noted in the streets of London by Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering (who are both interested in linguistics and phonetics). The two men had a discussion (which leads to a wager between them) in which Higgins insists he could get Eliza to pass in Society as a Duchess by teaching her to speak "proper", and the play deals with the changes in her accent and opportunities open to her after that. In the Preface to Pygmalion, Shaw wrote "It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him". It was about assumptions of Class and behaviour and speech.
In other words, the way someone speaks English may make others throw their arms open to welcome "one of us" into their group, whilst others will snigger or be outright hostile to them. When I was young the old "RP thing" was still very real. One wouldn't expect the Princess of Wales to sound as though she'd just dropped the flowers she had for sale into a rain-soaked London gutter. On the one hand mothers would tell children to speak "properly" ("Don't speak that, it sounds so common") and mention approvingly that someone they had met was "well-spoken", whilst on the other hand people from the other side would mock what they believed to be the affected/pretentious manner of speech of the upper middle class. Imagine the welcome Sir Jacob William Rees-Mogg (Eton and Trinity College Oxford) would receive at the bar in the Kingfisher in Dormanstown if his clipped vowels asked for a pint of bitter, however politely (and he IS studiously polite)! Sadly, this mockery/dislike/prejudice - call it what you will - goes both ways.
And that is the point made by Amelia Coburn in the article linked by Martin (HA! WONDERED WHERE THIS WAS GOING...!). She refers to the assumptions people from other areas make when they hear a Teesside accent: lower class/uneducated etc - despite the fact, as she amusingly mentioned in her Tweets on the subject, those people may not realise she "comes from Nunthorpe" (a relatively affluent part of Middlesbrough). I suppose it's because Teesside IS, and has been for decades, an area of high unemployment, and relatively poor education & health outcomes in children and adults. There are some accents that, whilst not RP, are more highly regarded than others. Without doing research on it for this, I'd say on the "favoured" side would be (gentle but not hard versions of) accents from Yorkshire, Aberdeen, "posh" Geordie and the South Coast, whilst on the "unfavoured" side would be Brummie, Glaswegian and Scouse (especially if heavy). Middlesbrough, I have to say, would come within that last category. But accent IS weird. I'm sure we'll get word from the cold and snowy North in due course, but I'll bet that many people from Pollok and Paisley (Glasgow) would raise an eyebrow and possibly snigger when hearing a conversation between two people from nearby Kelvinside or two people speaking the Morningside Edinburgh "pan-loaf" accent.
It's all a bit silly, really, especially when talking about SINGING accents. Amelia Coburn sings FOLK songs mostly though accepts she has been influenced by the great Joni Mitchell. Folk songs are about the local people in your area - very rarely about the doings of the Archbishop of Canterbury or the dons of Trinity College Cambridge. So you'd expect many of them to be sung in a local accent. How many people affect a generic American accent when singing rock or pop songs? Or use a Mockney or a Multi-Cultural London yoof accent when murdering a rap "song". So many from the USA have no idea that this rock/pop group or that group come from the UK when they hear the voices. To be fair I don't suppose any church choirs or commmunity choirs much less Welsh Male Voice Choirs, have people singing in American accents. It would sound wrong! "We plow* the fields and scadderr the good seed on the graand..."
* Acknowledgement here to Jane Austen's "Pride & Prejudice".
** How could we have guessed in Wilde's case (with his full bame being Oscar Fingal O'Fflaherty Wills Wilde?
For your interest she has a "gig" at Hutton Rudby Village Hall on Saturday 13th April - only 13 tickets left!
* I know, I know. They don't. Maybe they "Big Dipper" the seeds....
(Don't know what I did to get red print. A mistake. Sorry).
RvDB starts tonight with Barlaser dropping to the bench. Engel replaces Roberts. No HH on the bench! 😎
CJ:
Two changes as Van den Berg and Engel come in for Barlaser and Thomas. Howson more than likely back in the midfield.
One change in the squad as Bangura replaces Hackney on the bench, with the midfielder not making the squad today. We're told there hasn't been any kind of setback or anything, despite him being on the bench on Saturday. Carrick did say he would be taking a cautious approach with the midfielder in his return from injury, so he's not travelled for this one this evening.
Right, it's off to the Pickled Parrot for a beverage (with the Champions League on TV but BORO on the BBC Tees radio earbuds).