The proverbial game of two halves and the setup in the second half and come back proved that this was another missed opportunity in truth. Boro ended up having 36 shots on the the Cardiff goal and probably should've had a winner but Borges probably missed 2 hat-tricks on his own.
I think we learned that Boro without Lankshear are not as good a side and don't really have an alternative - also Boro look short in midfield and Malanda is not a credible option. Perhaps we also learned that Vitek is not as yet looking an improvement on Brynn and has now had quite a few errors that have cost goals - particularly at his near post and doesn't command his box as his frame might have suggested.
Still a point rescued and Swansea win or draw may still put Boro in a better position than when the day started. Sadly a game that was winnable has not been won - though Cardiff looked decent enough in the first half but maybe that was just as much down to Boro.
@mw-in-darwin totally agree. Hopefully KH has learnt his lesson.
cant decide if its 2 points dropped or 1 point saved! Answers on a postcard to Kim Hellberg please
@werdermouth - For me, we gifted them the 2 goals and made them look better than they were.
Still the unbeaten run continues and we remain on target for the 2 points a game required!
Note to KH - if it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it and too much tinkering is bad for the health of us supporters!
An honest assessment of the match by Dom Shaw in the Echo:
https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/sport/26646182.will-lankshear-comes-middlesbroughs-rescue-cardiff/
@boro-beckys-dad and they had a couple of really good chances before they scored.
Overall I think that a lot of the blame lays with the defensive part of the midfield.It doesn’t do that well enough.
Morris appears to be a one man wall, that gets breached because he cannot be in more than one place. And he does make (human) mistakes. Hellberg should have been ready for Cardiff to play a four there and he wasn’t, irrespective of leaving out Lankshear.
He and his assistants got the team and match up all wrong, until the second half, when Lankshear made a difference. I think it was KP that said Joseph does not look like a number 9. Apparently he believes that is his best position.
We just cannot continue like this. You win nowt if you concede too many goals and as I write this we have the worst defence until you get to Millwall and Bolton. Of course I am sure Hellberg will once again champion the stats, 36 shots, 12 on target, 26 crosses, but a xG of only 2.71.
Hellberg needs to have a real look at how he sets up and introduce a little pragmatism into his defending area. Maybe start with Vitek.
West Ham 0-1 at Swansea at half-time, so up to second place in the table, Boro back down to third: same number of points, but a GD of +18 compared with +6. 🙁
Well, gentlemen: that did NOT go to plan, to put it mildly. I have not (yet) read the posts during/after the game but I have a pot of tea and time to give some preliminary thoughts.
I thought Cardiff looked a better team than Boro in the first half. I was dismayed to see Malanda given another outing in midfield. I was more than dismayed to see Lankshear "rested" for the first half. This against a team coming off a 5-1 win (admittedly against a dire Watford but a big win is a big win).and against a team used to dominating possession. In the first half, when I think Cardiff scored with their two shots on target, Boro's midfield was in pieces and the team was playing with little confidence.
I felt that if Boro had faced the shots Cardiff's keeper faced in the first half, there would have been more than a mere two goals conceded.
Thankfully Boro made the changes at HT and got back into the game after Conway and Lankshear (who else) scored. Thereafter Boro had plenty of possession and Cardiff had a few breaks, but the winner didn't manifest itself.
The game could have put Boro top of the league at least until Swansea v West Ham. At the end I felt relieved Boro had a draw. A win would have been great but, at HT I would have grabbed a draw with both hands. Hopefully this lost opportunity will not cost Boro at the end of the season.
Can we agree to play the best striker in the league in Boro's starting line-up, please? And keep Malanda in his centre-back role,?
Well if that was Joseph's audition he right royally blew it.
Sometimes I think football managers try and be too clever as a result we stank the place out in 1st half.
The 2nd half team should be our starting lineup.
Personally I think we are conceding too many goals to be real contenders
Absolutely! This Malanda in midfield malarkey must cease! Today he offered Morris very little support, which allowed Cardiff far too much room. And I thought Morris, in turn, lacked his usual drive today, especially first half, which is perhaps a sign of tiredness given how much he needs to do in a midfield short of enforcers. But Berhalter made a real difference, as did moving Malanda back into defence.
Two more avoidable goals conceded: this really is our Achilles heel, isn’t it? I see that Ayling scored the lowest mark on the BBC’s match report, which I don’t think is particularly fair. Both Cardiff goals came from the other flank and I’m not sure Luke did much wrong.
Two players have yet to prove themselves, in my view. I’m not sure what Joseph, who cost us a lot of money, and Peart-Harris who didn’t, bring to the table. I certainly think either Arfsten or Sarmiento could have been more effective today than one-paced MPH (how ironic!)
@paulinboro As I said, you will win nowt with a poor defence, which does include the midfield.
Given our goals for and goals against, we have a unacceptable goal difference which will not be sufficient over the season, especially if/when injuries kick in.
We have made some good signings this summer, but we have also made what look like some bad ones. Hull were happy to see Joseph leave.
Hi all, again I've been absent for a while, and again, I apologise...
Family, work and theatre commitments have been keeping me otherwise engaged, even though I've continued to follow the games. You have to admit five of the last six (Great comebacks! Last minute goals! Lots and lots of goals in general!) have probably been nirvana for the neutrals, but they we aren't. Twenty-four in five games looks a lot better when the majority are in your favour.
I'm penning a review on a production of Brian Friel's Faith Healer, which feels most timely for where we are now given that our defence needs healing and our faith in individuals who haven't delivered like we hoped needs restoring. Come to think of it, how's that for a theme for my next preview? (Wrexham.)
More later.
Well yet another match where we only played for one half of a game, in part through KH getting his selection wrong; the positives were that we were able to fight back and did not lose but we should really be beating the likes of Cardiff at home.
Learning points:
1. You play your strongest team and only bench players if they are injured or say they need a rest.
2. Malanda is not a midfield player and should not be used there again.
3. Vitek is not an upgrade on Brynn and it is questionable if he should continue to be picked ahead of Brynn.
4. On the last few displays you have to question if the bench is as strong as we think it is as the likes of Joseph, Sarmiento, Peart-Harris are not justifying a starting spot and Barron can’t get a game.
We can’t afford another first half display like today at Bolton as sooner or later our luck will run out and we will pay the price. 😎
"...sooner or later our luck will run out..."
Interestingly KP, I thought this too. Logic usually tells us that, whether a team has "found themselves" or not, it's best to really pick up the points in the first half of a season as insurance for a possible fall. Now, Ipswich and Southampton (Spygate or not) subverted this last season, but how often have you known Boro to do it?
Last season we had fluidity for a while, then a fall... this season, we are struggling to find fluidity but the results remain somewhat stable. We really are in an odd state of mind, everyone - one point off the top, second highest scorers, the kind of individual skill and "comeback power" that one isn't used to seeing from Boro, and yet here we are, still dissatisfied.
@forever-dormo Maybe too high? Some of the criticisms of KH on Social Media from Boro supporters this evening are horrendous.
@forever-dormo A good response, Dormo.
I'm reminded of the heavy investment in 2014 and the heavier investment in 2015 and an attempt to, well, douse the "gloom" - and I must hold my hand up as being one of the people who tried to "douse" it - when we didn't beat Bournemouth at home following a 0-0 draw in '14 and were headed for another 0-0 after a significantly worse performance at home to QPR the following year until we were literally handed a way out at the very last minute.
For me, from a distance, a good performance at home to the top of the table team after we hadn't competed for promotion for years was nothing to worry about, and we were still excellently placed. As for QPR, history told me that any kind of win for a strong side - especially after they've been beaten heavily, as we had been 3-0 by Hull in the previous game - can get a run going again, especially if it looked unlikely that the win was coming for so long. The run did indeed get going again from QPR onwards - eight wins out of nine with not one goal conceded.
The concern that was actually raised at the time but seen as "harsh" was the lowering of expectations. We'd played well enough in the two games prior to Bournemouth, winning 3-0 and 4-0, to entice a larger crowd back to the Riverside for that game. And after the Hull defeat in 2015, there was a call for "more ambition" - but after the 0-0 and 1-0 respectively, the feeling was that keeping the ship steady and either just holding one's own at the top or getting the three points at all would suffice.
It's an instance of the unit protecting itself instead of seeking to properly respond to the needs and concerns of the fans - and I do have to admit that once the Boro are going through "something special", I like to protect it. I can be the sort who sees progress in terms of numbers, as was the case in 2014-15, 2015-16 and 2025-26, and when fans raise truthfully legitimate concerns, I can try and counter them or even dismiss them, because when you can sense "something coming, something good", as Stephen Sondheim wrote, why would you possibly want the buzz to be silenced? That's the logical take, anyway...
I'd like to build on this with my reaction to the initial shock to Will Lankshear not starting today. Logically, you could make the case that we had to show we weren't overly dependent on him, that being overly dependent on anyone per se isn't advisable - see thirty years ago and Emerson, Juninho and Fabrizio Ravanelli - and that Kyle Joseph is no slouch at this level. But Joseph isn't attuned to our regular match day set up in the same way Lankshear is, and the fans who may have been at the Riverside for the first time would most likely have been looking forward to seeing Lankshear in action from the start. How must they have felt?
Rotation of resources is a bit like maintenance of possession - it is pragmatic, it is sensible, and it is effective, but in the real world you're not operating by the same rules of football games or football management simulations.
If Kim Hellberg is continuing to give the perception, at this stage, that he doesn't quite know how to get this team fully flowing, I can sadly see confidence in him ebbing away in time even as my confidence in him to deliver fully remains. It brings me back to one of the greatest things I learned last season - there is so much more to consider in football than just points, league position or even goals.
Well, we've had the game. So let me go back to the enormous growth of both Cardiff and Middlesbrough in the 19th and 20th centuries. By way of comparison to the figures I quoted in my starter piece, I looked up figures (or the best estimate of the figures) for various other "local" places previously so much larger or more important than both Boro & Cardiff but which have been subsequently eclipsed. Here we go ...
Stockton 1821 - 5,004. 1831 - 7,763
Hartlepool. 1821 - 1,249. 1831 - 1,330
Darlington 1821 - 5,750. 1831 - 8,574
York. 1821.- 21,711. 1831. - 26,260
Whitby. 1821 - 8,698. 1831 - 10,275
So you will see how much more significant than Middlesbrough and Cardiff in 1821 were Stockton, Whitby and obviously York.
For a laugh as we have some people following this Blog from other places:
Perth (WA). 1821 - 0 (not established) 1831 - 1,375
Sydney NSW 1821 - 12,500. 1831 - 16,232
Perth (Scotland) 1821 - 19,068. 1831 - 20,016
Helsinki - 1821 - 4,750. 1831 - 11,100
Some places have grown and grown whilst others have not!
@martin-bellamy - I have not read other social media comments about Boro or the manager since today's game. I don't "do" Facebook, TikTok and Instagram and I rarely look at "X" these days - usually only if I am notified someone I like to read has posted something.
But as a general principle I think it would be better for many of the people posting over-critical or downright offensive comments on social media to THINK about it overnight. The comment might not seem so appropriate then, and no harm will have been done if it is simply deleted before "send" is pressed. I think it's fine to express disappointment or even dissatisfaction, and it is OK to be critical but it is not OK to write gratuitously offensive comments. The sender of the post is unlikely to be perfect even in his own area of expertise .
We don't seem to suffer from that sort of comment on this Blog.
@martin-bellamy Fortunately I would not know where to start looking for Social Media likes and dislike comments.
We have them on here, but there are reasoned and fair, even if they are not quite not what we agree with.