Great shape and discipline from West Brom which it didn’t look like Boro would be able to break down but a driving run by Hackney, sharp effort from Gilbert and a bit of fortune sees us 1-0 in front.
West Brom will surely have to come out a bit more now and if we can show a similar defensive shape and discipline then that could play into our hands quite nicely.
We do need more sharpness of movement and quality in the final third but the spaces might be there for us as the game goes on now.
That first half was a bit of a grind - West Brom sitting in the low block but Boro on the whole moved the ball too slowly with much of the game at walking pace. There were a few moves that attempted to inject a bit of urgency and they were probably the best opportunities but few shots and in the end it was a quicker move that gave Gilbert a shooting opportunity that hit the post and caused the own goal.
Might be a different second half but the Baggies look like they have pace up front to trouble our defence if they are left short - another goal needed for Boro but perhaps the low block will move higher up the pitch. Looks like a game for Hansen to run at the defence to me.
Pretty lacklustre first half. Had to wait 25 minutes for our first shot at goal, it was from Morris so you know how that went. We are struggling against the low block, but now we have scored they will have to be more adventurous and that may open things up for us.
Boro in the lead: WBA OG in the 42nd minute!
CJ:
Good drive from Hackney, who slides on across the edge into Gilbert's feet. It opens for him on the edge and he is so close with a low effort off the post. It bounces out and cannons off Charlie Taylor and in off the post!
And the thoughts of Adam Lanigan, the Beeb's reporter at The Hawthorns, at half-time:
Not sure a goal was coming, but as the half has gone on, Middlesbrough have taken control of the ball.
A big helping of luck for the goal, but there is a quiet confidence about the way they have knocked the ball around that shows they're a team near the top of the table.
Eric Ramsay probably would not have been too disappointed with a lot of the 45 minutes, but he now has a big job on his hands.
Text commentary:
An opening onslaught from West Brom as they forced four early corners and saw Sol Brynn deny Aune Heggebo, but that early excitement was dealt with by Middlesbrough, who built [???] their way into the game to lead at the break.
West Brom, with a five-man backline, defended in depth and were disciplined in their approach as they limited the visitors to just a long-range effort from Aidan Morris before Tommy Conway had a shot saved.
Karlan Grant brought a decent stop out of Brynn, but the home side fell behind five minutes before the break as Charlie Taylor diverted the ball into his own net after Alex Gilbert's shot came back off the post.
Promising from West Brom to start with, but they failed to make the most of a strong start and Middlesbrough have capitalised.
Just as I’m about to say I’m not happy with the way Boro are playing - too slow, little idea how to get through 11 players behind the ball , not creating chances etc etc they are gifted an own goal.
WBA could have easily scored 2 goals resulting from a mistake by Ayling who later was outpaced by an opponent who could have scored. They have had the most chances.
The game can go either way based on the first half.
Second half needs to improve.
Ps why is Conway rarely in the penalty area when the ball is played there?
The counter comment is the team are nevertheless winning and a game lasts 90 minutes . So, let’s see some improvement. Fingers crossed.
philip of Huddersfield 🫢🫢🫢
Silvera makes it 0-2 in the 58th minute, assisted by Whittaker. 🙂
Sounds as though HH is running the show - CJ:
Hackney brilliant driving Boro forward again. He slides it forward for Whittaker. Just gets caught up at his feet., so he can't carry it. Slides wide to Silvera, who gets to the edge and produces a clinical low finish across goal.
And then with the first attack in the second half Silvera scores a cracking goal.
Now let’s see the team control the game
philip of Huddersfield
Burgzorg on for Gilbert in the 64th minute.
The Baggies pull one back in the 75th minute. Thank God for Silvera's goal!
The Baggies pull one back in the 75th minute. Thank God for Silvera's goal!
And that man Wallace, on as a sub in the 65th minute, makes it 2-2 in the 80th minute. 🙁
CJ:
Boro look to have thrown this one away. Two goals in five minutes. Iling-Junior gets it out wide. Low cut-back to the edge where Hackney slides in to stop it reaching one West Brom player, but plays it straight into Wallace's path. He hammers it home.
Fry on for Whittaker in the 82nd minute.
2-2 Rubbish play by Boro when cruising at 2-0 and especially missing a sitter by new centre half.
Conway must be replaced permanently
philip of Huddersfield 👎👎👎
Boro back in the lead - Burgzorg on the stroke of full time, assisted by SS. Four minutes of injury time.
Castledine makes his debut at 90+1.
Phew!!! Well that wasn't how I thought the game would see out once Boro went 2-0 up - Boro guilty of taking their foot off the gas and then got caught out by the pace of West Brom. Once they drew level it was hard to imagine that the team who would win it was Boro. But they got their second wind and it was a good move and a fine finish from Burgzorg! That may well be a very important 3 points with two unlikely scorers for Boro (well 3 if you count the own goal 😉) - Well done to the players for not giving up!
Well after looking like it was going to be two points dropped Burgzog pops up with the winner and judging by his reaction may be his last. We never really got out of third gear and were almost made to pay. If Malanda's header goes in, thought he was unlucky he headed it down on target but too powerfully and it bounced over, at 3-0 it would have been comfortable. Then for some reason we came a bit open at the back and they took advantage. So will definitely be top two at end of the weekend and then another away day at Stoke next week.
Final whistle 3-2 and Boro get out of jail .
For the time being, I will leave it to others to comment on this game
Philip of Huddersfield
We need a decent experienced forward who scores goals.
Probably a non runner but I’d be happy with GRANT of WBA who played as a centre forward for Huddersfield, transferred to WBA who mainly play him as a ‘winger with pace ‘ but moves into the middle a lot - a decent goal scorer and very experienced at this level.
philip of Huddersfield 👍👍
It did cross my mind a couple of times as he tracked back and got stuck in that Conway may be a better defender than attacker!
However managers do seem to appreciate his all round game, including Hellberg. Some teams would not expect a striker to drop so deep and instead stay up top and save their energy to make the difference with their finishing. It is a hard one. He was ponderous on a few occasions not releasing the ball and distributing ineffectively. He does have a tough remit on his own as a lone striker. If we didn’t win I am sure he would be getting more grief. Let’s hope his luck changes soon. Do we value his all round game or go for Strelec who may be a better finisher but less energetic?
Phew! Any pacy frontman is going to be a struggle for LA but he makes up for it with his positioning and his experience at the back.
Great to see Silvera and Burgzorg take their goals so well but still nothing from Conway although his effort can’t be doubted.
Let’s hope the new guys add a bit of spark and that Castledine can provide a difference upfront.
We bank the points and move on to Stoke. Here’s hoping for a favour from Leicester at Coventry tomorrow.
Phew.
Well, despite being absolutely dominant with the ball, we really didn't look at all convincing. At 2-0 we threw it all away by sitting deeper and allowing them back into the game. At 2-1 we were hanging on and at 2-2 it looked like there was only going to be one winner and that wasn't going to be Boro.
But, as we have shown many times this season, we keep plugging away till the end. How many Boro teams over the years have demonstrated that fortitude. A great goal to win it.
The successful teams are always the ones that can find the right result when they do not play well. So a good result tonight and I am not going to begin to try and over analyze it. Well done Boro and now come on you foxes.
@eboroacum Whilst I don’t disagree with basically what you say, I would add that without him in the CURRENT squad and Hellberg’s current system, the team would come under a lot more pressure. I also believe that Strelec won’t be the answer, nor Sarmiento if we sign him.
A great three points though, with passion and resilience at the end. However, there was little on the bench, we lack pace at the back as it showed tonight and other teams would have exploited that more than WBA. Similar against Southampton, we rode our luck in the first half and then made our chances count. That won’t happen all the time just like the four previous games without a win.
We will hopefully be better when Brittain returns and another CB please.
As for Mr Silvera, in the games that he has played more than 45 minutes, we have won 8, drawn 3, lost 1
What seems like a fair summary of the match by the Beeb (Adam Lanigan):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/live/c0ke3xj52ddt#Middlesbrough
Malanda its MotM. We're never going to keep him under wraps, are we? 🙁
Wow! Just WOW!
Too late to say more, and it's taken a while to calm down to this level. It will have to wait until Saturday afternoon to read the other posts and then to say more. Probably after attending Saturday's local market.
But THREE points have rarely been enjoyed more. Especially as a table of people at The Spotted Toad, who I can only assume were acting as WBA fans (they were so gloating when WBA came back into the game and looked like winning and seemed to be goading the Boro faithful in there), had to face karma in the 90th minute. Beer and wine would normally have been flung into the air at that point except that I think people were aware of the height to which the pub's prices have risen recently.
Tension? I thought I was on the rack...
"If you can keep your head when all around you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..."
Rudyard Kipling
It was a wet, wet, wet night. And it did look like I'd be Wishing I Was Luckier after that not at all Swede Surrender of a two goal lead. But Picture This... Somewhere, Somehow, that Swede Little Mystery of a late winner came, and I couldn't resist the Temptation to jump for joy.
It's notable that every time I've watched a Boro match at the Kitchen Bar in Belfast, at least every time that I can recall, we've won. Boro 1-0 Sunderland (Garry Monk, 2017), Boro 3-0 Leeds (Tony Pulis, 2018 - memorable for the one and only Hat-trick Bamford), Boro 1-0 West Brom (Tony Pulis, 2018)... then came that spell where my love of the game kind of vanished until Wilder and Carrick helped resurrect it. So the next game was Blackburn 0-2 Boro (Michael Carrick, 2025), then Boro 2-1 West Brom (Rob Edwards, 2025), and now this one. Happily I wasn't alone in my celebrations, either - the Southampton fan and the United fan who were watching the game with me were wishing me and us all the best.
All that said, I'm reminded of a line of commentary that popped up when Germany, 3-0 up by half time, seemed to be heading for an overwhelming victory over South Korea at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas in 1994. They hadn't accounted for the Koreans pulling the deficit back to 3-2 by the hour, and they nearly conceded an equaliser too. The commentator implied that this was delightful for the neutral, but certainly not for the Germans. And whatever the "entertainment value" of tonight's rollercoaster, anyone in the bar could see I had a face like thunder after the second West Brom goal.
Further footballing patterns from the past, in mentality and scoreline, and all from international fixtures, entered my head as well. One was Brazil's 3-2 win over the Netherlands, also in Dallas in 1994, where Romario, Bebeto and the cradle-rocking celebration that spawned far too many copies seemed to put the eventual winners of the World Cup firmly in control before Dennis Bergkamp and Aron Winter hauled the Dutch level just over ten minutes later. It took a certain Branco to bail Brazil out with a tremendous free kick.
I also recall Jack Charlton making the point that in many ways, a two goal lead is one of the most dangerous. I get where he's coming from - such a lead can lull the winners into a false sense of security that the job is done when all it will actually take to fire the losing team back into life is one shot going in from anywhere, anyhow.
What I will say, though, is that while West Brom didn't lie down even when we were 2-0 up - and I admired them for this, a sign they were giving that extra bit more for the new manager in front of their own fans against a promotion favourite - I didn't really think there was too much of a drop in standards from us by that stage. My belief was that we gradually felt our way into the game and took control without imposing ourselves enormously in the first half, so when the goal came - even though I was baffled as to how the ball ended up in the net for a little while - it was no surprise. It was, I felt, a sound performance bordering on impressive, and would have perhaps definitely cemented itself as "impressive" if we'd solidified and built upon our advantage following Silvera's beaut of a finish.
We didn't, of course - I think a combination of nerves, clever West Brom substitutions and the dilemma of managing the game vs continuing to express for the fans all came together. It could be argued Malanda's miss was a turning point, but I certainly wouldn't point the finger at him for trying, especially after another superb individual performance. He had the right idea in heading the ball down - François Omam-Biyik showed how effective that could be against Argentina in 1990 - it was just too powerful here.
The West Brom finishes were swift, slick and painfully sudden. We'd seen how quickly they turned a commanding lead into an uncomfortable one for REBoro at the Riverside, and inspired by their own fans, they went that step further and wiped out KHBoro's lead entirely. Worse, you really can imagine just how much Eric Ramsay and his team will have been kicking themselves when reflecting on the game, because for a matter of minutes we really were there for the taking. And we all know how valuable a debut home win is for a new manager - both RE and KH have enjoyed one.
But, and this was where I got the most satisfaction from, I think, we then "did a Kipling" in a way. We kept our heads when we could easily have lost them, and I could sense a turning of the screw in the pattern of play again as the final minutes approached. I can remember one of the non-Boro football fans telling me we still had a chance, and he was right - while we were vulnerable, so were West Brom and it is quite possible that they may have been caught up in the excitement of possibly winning a game. So how delightful was it to see not only Burgzorg's winner but also learn later that it was Silvera who provided the crucial pass, thus wonderfully atoning for the game-changing free kick concession?
No, it won't be looked back on as a technically masterful display, but it was certainly a night for heroes and a terrific reflection of promotion winning credentials - a team finding a way to win even when they've made it more difficult for themselves than they ought to have. And the bottom line is...
Three points, job done, and more time in the top two.
Just watched the highlights again (I'm getting good as I've actually already put the link up on the home page) and still didn't think we were going to win it after they equalised.
A word of praise for Silvera with his well-taken goal and a deft assist for the winner - to add to his goal and assist in recent games. He's certainly stepped up his game and proved he can be a valuable player for Boro after looking almost certainly on the way out in the summer but filled in as left wing-back and did well early in the season and has probably played in 3 or 4 positions when asked - the joy on his face after scoring was priceless and rivals anything professional exuberant celebrater, Tommy Conway, has delivered.
As for Burgzorg - he looked less happy than even the West Brom players when he scored the winner and perhaps it's frustration and not getting much pitch time even though Conway hasn't found the net in open play since August with only a pen to his name in 24 games - surely the number 9 shirt demands more. Indeed, Burgzorg may well be heading for a January exit if Boro can find an able replacement.
I actually found it an odd substitution to bring Burgzorg on on for Gilbert when Boro were 2-0 up with a quarter of the game to go - especially given West Brom would be pushing forward and maybe Boro needed a body in midfield - though Gilbert had made a few careless passes prior to his substitution - still it proved to be a good one with Burgzorg getting the winner but perhaps Boro shouldn't have let the game slip.
We may well see some of the new boys getting some pitch time with a midweek game coming up followed by the early Saturday kick-off - though what is interesting was Nypan didn't even make the squad*, Hansen left on the bench with Sene and Strelec still missing, it means the summer attacking recruits have been peripheral figures with two-thirds of the season almost reached.
Makes it even more impressive that Boro are second given none of the above have really featured and our main striker has managed just one penalty in the last 24 games. Imagine where this team would've been if any of them had worked out - also makes you appreciate players like Silvera who have stepped up and taken their chance!
*On bench as Pedro rightfully corrected me
@werdermouth That’s a very good post werder. However Nypan was one of the subs.
Saying that the bench it still light if we were chasing a game, which has happened in the games previous to Southampton. OK, someone one will say Strelec and Sene are injured, but as you said and I have commented on a couple of times, the summer forwards purchased/loaned have failed to impress. Add in Hamilton, not on the bench and one could argue of poor recruitment by Scott and his team. After all they were not bought for peanuts.
I also thought the Hellberg should have made further substitutions before WBA scored, a number of Boro players looked “knackered”, but maybe his choices were limited.
We need more upfront, not Sarmiento IMO, but of course with the summer signings taking up places and to date, not effective, we may have to sacrifice Burgzorg to bring in someone else. That player needs to be strong and has pace, just like Burgzorg, but is more consistent and would hopefully score more goals.
Now where is Scott and his team going to find him, given our limited resources and more importantly, their summer failures.
@pedro. I understand what you are saying about SS but for me he just isn’t consistent enough as has been proved under previous managers and in two failed loan spells; he also struggles against the stronger sides and is a liability defensively as demonstrated by the free kick (should have been a penalty) he give away from which the baggies scored.
Similarly, DB is of the same mould, at times he produces like he did last night but all too often he frustrates and fails to deliver; neither would be in my team and I would not be disappointed if either or both were moved on.
As far as the front line is concerned, I am a fan of Strelec and believe he needs to be given an extended run in the side (like TC) and I am sure he will deliver if provided with the service.
Far from our best performance last night with shades of Carrickball for long periods but we stuck at it and got the win in the end against a poor team.
Wednesday will be an even tougher challenge against Stoke who don’t concede many and we will need another battling performance, where the first goal could well be the decider. Fingers crossed it goes to us. 😎
@werdermouth I was a bit baffled by the Gilbert/Burgzorg sub too. I thought he would bring on a defender and push Browne into midfield for Gilbert to give a bit more protection.
Nevertheless, one way or another, it worked out.
I thought we were a bit better than most it seems. I thought West Brom were very sound defensively in the first half and whilst we lacked a bit of zip and intensity in our attacks we controlled the game and found a breakthrough moment.
The second goal was a well taken counter as West Brom had to push forward. A very good away performance at that point.
Getting dragged back to 2-2 was gutting at the time but I wouldn’t put too much blame on us. Their first was a well struck free kick with Brynn seeing it late - not a great deal that we could do. The equaliser was also well taken but a bit fortunate to fall to Wallace via Hackney’s deflection. They had a real momentum at the time and perhaps the only criticism is that we didn’t recognise that and kill the game a game more.
Still, Boro’s third was a superb team goal, well crafted and finished and I think the right team won in the end.
Not Boro’s best performance but I don’t think it was bad at all.
My mistake just spotted Nypan on the subs list - didn't see him the first time 🧐