It's all very well saying it was the performance rather than the result that was important in the FA Cup tie against Blackburn. But that makes it worse when both were poor. No silver lining to that cloud, I'm afraid.
Maybe a blessing as it was a Friday night game after a Monday night game against Sunderland.
The crowds were pretty reasonable, on the whole. Leeds- Harrogate was a sell out, Bristol City, Norwich Leicester, Forest had well over 20000, Liverpool had 60,000 against Accrington Stanley. For many of those teams it was an opportunity for fans to be able to attend matches which are normally filled by season ticket holders. Villa got 40000 on Friday night and Everton 38000 on Thursday night. I read that Leeds fans were able to buy up to 6 tickets each. A couple of outliers were Sunderland who apparently had less than us, but I can't find a figure, and Sheff Utd who only got 6000 on Thursday night.
Pedro, I will emphasize, that I said ON PAPER.@jarkko of those eight injured players, two are goalkeepers, which has had little impact on our performances so far. Two are Smith and Lenihan who have not played this season, including Forss.
OK, Morris and Conway are big misses, but all teams get injuries.
As I posted previously, I have only missed watching, the Blackburn home game. I certainly wish I had missed watching this game today.
Yes a number of team changes, also from Blackburn. But we cannot keep on making excuses for inconsistent performances. We were very poor and Blackburn should have won easily.
I wish I have your faith in Carrick and Scott, to improve things.
I really think we have a good squad with two good players for every position. For some even three but some injuries, too.
But something is lacking at the moment. Yesterday was bad, as I said to Werder we were were playing like a hand brake on. Too many first team players were rested and a leader was missing on the field. Desire and speed were not there.
If we would like to strenghten the squad in January, I do not know who to sell first. We have now sold a player wanting to live in the South, and most of us are missing him as a squad player.
But still, we are unbeaten in the last six Championship matches and are fifth in the table. Not bad, as we all know we have not played well recently - especially at home. But we are now in our best league position at the beginning of the year since since the Karanka era.
I think the main problem is the home form. It looks terrible and I can see the frustration in there. We seem not to he able to open a low blog defence - that is always difficult. But we must find a way to unlock that.
We have a few players playing below their known level at the moment. Hackney is playing OK, but he is not playing as well as before his injury. Ditto McGree. The latter has been in and out of the team for injuries and never played as well this season as last season.
We need stability and of course consistency next. We are in a good place in the league - still fifth. But we need some players starting to play as well as they could. We rely too much on Latte Lath and Doak at the moment. I think Azaz has been excellent, too.
But we need Morris or Howson back as soon as possible. And then McGree and Hackney need to step up. They are two of our best players alonside Latte Lath and Doak.
Luckily we have two centre halves on duty for the League matches - I think Fry and van den Berg have been superb recently. And Edmundson and Clarke are very good options from the bench.
I know yesterday was very low key performance. Also I must say the atmosphere was very quiet at Riverside compared to the Nottingham Forest vs. Luton Town match I watched yesterday. The City Ground was much more loud.
But Forest is flying in the Premier League now. Michael Carrick must get his troops playing better at the Riverside next. Only that will get the supporters backing the team at home. He has to find a way of scoring against the low defenceive block.
Luckily we are up there in the top six, after this bad batch of performances. So there is hope with nearly half of the season to play for. A lot will depend on the January window. I hope we can keep Latte Lath, McGree, Doak and Hackney until the end of the season. And have Morris back next week!
Up the Boro!
It was notable that MotD started their highlights programme with archive footage of Des Lynham and games of long ago before declaring a reminder of what a magical competition the FA Cup ‘is’ - though in reality they meant ‘was’ as most sides in the top two leagues selected weakened teams as a cup run was not a priority. Unfortunately my laptop battery ran out before Boro appeared on the highlights show so I guess they were nearly last!
Indeed, Michael Carrick didn’t pick a team to win the tie but instead rested as many players as he could and experiment with a few options. Perhaps only McCabe and Gilbert gave him anything to think about but even our young midfielder will struggle to get another game once Morris and Howson are fit.
What he will have learnt is that if Doak or Latte Lath are sold in this window then Boro are in trouble unless players of equal quality can be brought in - which tend to cost serious money in January as nobody lets quality leave for a few million - unless you’re Boro looking to free up squad places by selling Jones.
What we saw yesterday were the fruits of Scott's thinking that, even if we lose Doak, the transfer of Jones frees up the path for Hamilton and/or Forss to stake a claim for the right wing position.
It also provided an opportunity for us to witness the theory that if we lose Latte Lath and Conway is also out injured, then we have Burgzorg and/or Forss to step in as strikers.
The result and performance were all too predictable, but at least we looked a much better balanced side: we are now just as weak and ineffectual down our right side as we have been all season down our left
Carrick, as always, was the one left to pickup the pieces
Good point Len. I wonder how much say Carrick has in transfer decisions and whether he finds some of the decisions made both frustrating and maybe even demotivating.
It will be interesting to watch Blackburn v Portsmouth on Wednesday evening.
Come on BORO.
The argument being put forward now is that the transfers of Jones and Doak are unrelated because if Doak gets sold he will need to be replaced anyway and Carrick suggest Jones will be replaced by a different type of player and not necessarily a right winger.
It seems to suggest Forss will be deemed the wide-right player to cover Doak - though the only player from the squad I think can play wide right this season is probably Burgzorg. Hamilton at the moment doesn't look like a first-team player - he looks way behind a player like Gilbert in terms of awareness and confidence on the pitch and he is probably still a fringe player under Carrick.
This is a sobering read.
It does make me wonder what will happen when Mr Gibson is no longer around
In what respects? 😎It will be interesting to watch Blackburn v Portsmouth on Wednesday evening.
Come on BORO.
@k-p-in-spain I think it is Blackburn playing their match in hand. If they win, they go to fifth and we drop to sixth.
@k-p-in-spain I was thinking about Portsmouth being our next opponent on Saturday, also if Blackburn don’t win we stay 5th and Blackburn’s game in hand is gone.
Come on BORO.
@exmil. Yes good points which I hadn’t really appreciated.
Additionally, Portsmouth will have played a mid week game whilst Boro will have had a free week to recover so should be at optimum level; what could go wrong! 😉😎