Been to Church this evening. A lot of the service was linked to what’s happening in Ukraine.
I felt I was lucky - I’ve never witnessed war and I can live comfortably and feel safe.

I came home to a warm house, had a beautiful meal accompanied by a pleasant Chardonnay and followed by my favourite pudding.

Puts everything into context - my earlier posting that today’s result was a disaster means nothing. We need to remember that football is just a sport contested by very well renumerated players.

  So Ken,  we all have a lot to be grateful for.    Life’s too short  - especially at 84 ? - to take your bat home.

We all acknowledge that you’ve contributed a lot to this site and no one can come close to the research you’ve done to support your posts.

Philip of Lindley 

ps I suggest no one responds to this.

Lets look forward to the next game .

To keep in contention we are going to have to do something we have not done all season. Win away by scoring more goals than the home team.

Luton will be difficult and the law of averages says we will drop points at home. By it comes to the Cardiff match, we may be too far behind for it to matter.

So still no away win this year and only 5 clean sheets since CW arrived, in fact only 11 all season. Reading CW's comments this morning about the defence, it might be the time for the return of Sol Bamba as he is 3 inches taller than McNair. Maybe Paddy needs a rest so he could miss out against Spurs. It would probably be sensible to let McGree miss out to recover from his strain as the league is far more important.

Watched the goals on Quest and in my humble opinion goalkeeper should have done better for the 2nd and 3rd goals but what looks like coming to bite us on the rear is the lack of a decent  striker, the only team who seem to get away without one are man city, many in the Diasboropora have been saying this for seasons. Our away form sucks 1pt in 12 not good

From the start it looked like a car crash. A boot up field, and a goal. We boot it up field and nothing! Repeat as required. We were playing a team bound for the drop, our confidence was in the sky, so tell me, why no undeserved wins, no romps with easy points? If simple boots upfield are going to shatter us (and in the First few minutes) then something is wrong, they were easy meat, period! If you are playing the bottom team then you play your strongest team, and you get it over quickly, try to go two up a.s.a.p. Then rest your stars. We went on that pitch under cooked, idle, careless. Still no solution to the goalkeeper problem, still no threat in the air (time for our Young striker). If it was a disappointment not to win after being three goals down ( not a joke) and pulling two back, then they must have been awful.   

Listened to the match and watched the SKY lowlights. Even my pessimism didn't see Barnsley scoring three and our two goals were no consolation. It seemed that having Siliki, who has not played enough for us to have adjusted to Championship football (if he can), disrupted our midfield but the goals conceded were all from poor defending. Lumley does make some good saves but even more seem to just trickle in out of his reach. While I see the point about Watmore coming on as a sub, when we start a match trying to push the opposition back his running at their defence to cause panic and poor clearances is important. We are now at the stage where we must continue winning at home (which is unlikely as we are into an unusually long run) but must also find the way to win several away or we will slip out of the fight for the playoffs leaving the season to just fade away with no great hopes for the next one.

After the fight back against WBA, the Barnsley result has dampened my interest in the Tottenham match. I just hope we are not humiliated and put in a  fight to create a good atmosphere at the Riverside. The Championship fixtures are far more important and there look like a lot of hard games to play.

I've just watched the aptly named 'lowlights'... terrible marking for the first, well if any marking, then Lumley out on the six yard box but no real attempt to save it and then nutmegged.

Did Boro hit the woodwork twice or was that poor video? I still think our keeper is a problem and having JLS on looked like starting with ten men. Off the pace, off the boil and would have been better off the pitch, a selection gamble that did not work in any way. My mind is somewhat clouded by what is happening in the Ukraine but, a big but, I'd rather we had beaten Barnsley and then lost to Tottenham but it's trivia really.

UTB,

John

I have just watched the highlights, and a worse exhibition of goalkeeping I have never seen. As noted on this blog many times, he should be ordered to stay on his line, he has no idea of where he, the ball, the opposition, or his team mates are, he comes into no mans land, and freezes! And that is another goal against. If you want to be really unhappy try this. Non of the three goals were of sufficient guile or pace      to cross the goal line in any professional game taking place yesterday, and that's a fact! Oh, and by the way, get our veteran centre back on the pitch, he knows more about defending than any one else at the club.  

Whilst it’s easy to be wise after the event I did think that our Wilder ball was going to be an easy target by playing Silikiij in the middle of the park from the off. He just wasn’t in it and I thought that Paddy should have been moved into the midfield very quickly and Sol Bamba inserted into a shaken defence.

Dijksteel was very poor and as Wilder himself admitted he could have subbed the whole of the back five.

I don’t know if the players were suffering from complacency, one eye on the Spurs glamour tie or they have started to believe they are better than they actually are!

Hopefully they will all have had a boot up the proverbial (including our manager and coaching staff!) and can reconfigure, reset and get back to winning ways.

A great disappointment to all the long suffering Boro fans and I’ve thrown my foam hands 🙌 in the bin.

The sooner we get a new keeper the better !

I shall go back to what I know best 👀

OFB

@John Richardson Yes, Balogun hit the same post two times. Both times the ball ended back into the penalty area. Small margins.

And yes, our defending was terrible in the first half. The third came when we started to take risks and both Dijksteel and Lumley made a mistake. It often needs two mistakes to concede a goal in professional football.

I think Barnsley bossed the first half. Lea Siliki was not very good but the defence did not help him a bit. I think Wilder said it quite well after the game on his interview at mfc.co.uk .

If we play like recently, it will be only 1,5 points per game. Shall winning home and loosing away matches keep us up in the play-offs? 

I think we need to start playing (=defending) better away from home. We have conceded too many goals:

- at Barnley three

- a joke goal versus WBA (home)

- at Bristol two

- at QPR two

So there is a trend in defending. I hope to see a reaction versus Spurs tomorrow. Up the Boro!