I should add that Callum Brittain is quoted on both Transfermarkt and Betfair.com as having 4 yellow cards (Norwich, Portsmouth, Ipswich and Leicester) but only 3 yellow cards on the EFL.com website - so some dispute on that number.
However, if I check the BBC match reports it shows that Brittain was not booked in the game against Leicester - so EFL.com appears correct in saying he's only on 3.
@werdermouth So it is looking like HH and Conway are the ones having to be careful.
I thought that although the game yesterday had a few hard fouls, there was nothing nasty and the reffere was at times lenient. I did think HH was close once or twice to a booking and did getting a telling off.
Yes I think Hackney had his final warning from the ref at one point - though he was lucky not to pick up a yellow when he tried bring down a Derby player who ran past him but missed with his attempted trip - plus he also pulled a player back and escaped a card. Incidentally, Boro have had no cards in their last 2 games. The last card was Hackney in the 94th minute against Oxford.
I stand corrected, I like many others saw were it said “before the 19th game” as opposed to the FA essential guide to players, were it states “up to and including the 19th game” which in our case is Hull (A). We have two players on 4 yellow cards, Conway and Hackney, so fingers crossed they can get through the match without picking up a yellow.
Come on BORO.
I love this picture. Targett launching a rocket and scoring.
Up the Boro!
Almost all of Hackney's yellow cards involved him pulling back an opponent. generally putting his team in greater danger as a result. He did this yesterday and was extremely lucky not to pick up the booking that would have sidelined him. I wrote a few weeks ago that the coaching staff should get a grip of this, but this side of Hackney's game continues unabated to the team's detriment.
A hard fought win at the weekend in what appeared to be very trying conditions. Nice to score from a set piece again which Hellberg said was all down to avi Viveash and not him. Looking at the EFL site there are 41 Championship players sitting on 4 yellows including Hackney and Conway. So a number have to be on their best behaviour this week. Saw on Facebook that Edilson Malanda flew in yesterday. He is only available from January 1, how does the squad of 25 work at that point? Do we have to take someone out immediately or is it like the start of the season when there was some fluidity until the end of the window when teams have to finalise their squads?
@mw-in-darwin He can at least start training with the squad, should be match fit, assuming he is not carrying an injury 🤣🤣🤣, and apparently can play for the under 21’s.
I realise I am late to the party after the Derby game, so I may keep this short. It has taken me the last 18 hours to dry out following the Biblical downpour I trudged through on my way to and from the Riverside on Saturday.
Thanks for the information about yellow cards, lads. Hopefully our 4-star men can avoid hitting the 5-star target on Friday against Hull City. I agree - Hackney must be the luckiest man alive to have avoided at least ONE yellow card on Saturday. He was walking on very thin ice at times.
A few points. To go down 1-0 after about 90 seconds on Saturday was more than a sickener. I felt like the whale when it was transformed into a bowl of petunias, falling to the ground from high in the atmosphere in "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy". To get back into the game and then hit a winner in the closing stages was excellent. Lots of possession but lack of a cutting edge is in Boro's DNA, so it was very welcome to score the 2 goals needed to get the win.
Riley McGree made a big impact when he came on, in terms of workrate, willingness to receive the ball and creativity. It is vital that he is kept fit now that he is "back" again. Bangura was excellent bearing in mind the fact he had almost disappeared in recent months, so he'd played no football. Targett has been a good acquisition this season and whilst it is good he was able to fill-in at centre back, we can't wait for Fry to return and for Malanda to become available. However on the Fry front, even if he became available for the Hull game it would not be sensible to expect him to play the next 30+ consecutive games including cup games until the end of the season. There will be other injuries, tweaks, back spasms etc to take him out of the team if history is anything to go by. A Hayden Hackney or a David Armstrong he is not. It will be interesting to see whether Baptiste features after his successful entry onto the stage in the closing minutes of Saturday's match.
It was just so UPLIFTING to get the win. It felt, to me at least, that this might be the game we later look back on as the one where Boro turned the corner after being becalmed in the last 8 weeks or so. Amazingly, despite the fall-off in results, Boro is in second place in the league although clearly a telescope is needed to see Coventry City in the top position. The dream remains there even though there might be the odd hic-cough en route. Hopefully the team has now gone through the "bad patch" that seems inevitable for most teams at some stage in the long Championship season. Maybe the pleasant sunlit uplands lay ahead.
The new coaching team, with the help of Adi Viveash, has a few days to see more of the players in training and to instill whatever methods will be the preferred route to success! I remain hopeful.
Arghh...! It was the whale which had the internal mental disussion about the very big and apparently ROUND thing the whale was approaching at great speed as it fell. It was the whale who wondered whether that big round thing for which the name "Ground" seemed apt, would be friendly - just before the big "SPLAT!" inevitably occurred. On the other hand it was the bowl of petunias created at the same time as the whale, which thought "Oh, no! Not again..!"
The Infinite Improbability Drive strikes again.
@werdermouth - So, if Conway (should he be selected) and Hackney both avoid a yellow card against Hull, will the next hurdle be "10 yellow cards in 38 games" to qualify for the next ban?
@forever-dormo Have you got any of those special mushrooms left, FD?
The dolphins had it right
Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending demolition of Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind to the danger. But most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs, or whistle for titbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means - shortly before the Vogons arrived. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double backwards somersault through a hoop, whilst whistling the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’. But, in fact, the message was this “So long and thanks for all the fish”.
@selwynoz - Douglas Adams was a VERY imaginative and funny writer.
Whilst enjoying a lie-in one Sunday in Chester, with Radio 4 doing its thing on the bedside cabinet (maybe after 'The Archers" Omnibus edition) I suddenly heard a weird theme tune.
And then began a story (which later became the first of a series of books, then a double or triple LP, then a collector's edition of a series of cassettes - if anyone can remember those - and later a cinema film) which started with a man's surprise and growing consternation at finding an excavator machine being readied to demolish his house. There had been a "mix-up" over the publicity given to the displaying of Notice to build an intended Hyper Space bypass which would require the demolition not only of the house but the planet on which it stood.
There followed some brief personal interogatories about exactly HOW much had been consumed at the pub the night before, but it eventually became apparent this was a radio programme as novel in its own way as The Goon Show and Round the Horne had been. A legend was created that lives on in the memory (and in the books, cassette tapes etc....). And it is not possible, without a smile breaking out, to think about the work which I first heard on the radio on a late Sunday morning. Was it really about 46 years ago...?
(1978 when first broadcast, apparently, which does fit in with the memory even if not QUITE fitting in with the maths. Forty SEVEN years. Forty two would have been just too much of a coincidence!).
Bulldozer. That's the word (not excavator).
We are still without a goalkeeper coach at the first team level after Alan Fettis left in mid September. Boro's academy head of coaching, Chris Pennock, has temporarily taken on the goalkeeper coaching role.
Now Norwich City have named Declan Rudd as their new first-team goalkeeping coach with Tony Roberts leaving the Championship club. Rudd spent 18 years as a player at Norwich.
Former Welsh international Roberts, who moved to Carrow Road in September 2024 following a spell coaching at AC Milan, is taking up a new role with an as yet unspecified club.
I wonder if he is possibly coming to Boro???
Up the Boro!