@philip-of-huddersfield. The England team lost interest for me in the days of the “golden team” of the likes of Beckenham, Lampard, Ferdinand etc when we should have won it but didn’t.
You are correct that the team of 1966 had the three world class players you mention, since then we have had many players who think they are world class but are not.
England teams since then have one thing in common, they have never failed to disappoint.
I was out to dinner this evening so recorded the match but made sure on returning home that I knew the score beforehand and then decided not to watch yet another England failure.
The most important game today for me was Boro v Luton and in the end the better team won. CoB 😎
Dreadful news from St Helier this morning after what appears to have been a gas explosion, the second tragedy this week for the island.
Meanwhile in Qatar, England ONLY lost a football match. Different experiences some people have on tragedy though when the BBC’s main story puts football first.
Wasn't able to follow the match live so not much to say about it other than being pleased with the result.
Although I have not been watching the world cup I have of course been keeping up with the news about it. Something that Carrick said in his post match press conference shows how (as I see it) he is managing us in much the same way that Southgate manages England.
“It wasn’t so much just the winning, it was how we grew into the game and kept trying to do the things that we’ve been talking about. It’s not easy to keep getting on the ball when you’ve just given it away twice.
Here he is demonstrating that he knows things go wrong but the key thing is to keep on trying. We've all played football and you know that some days things just don't go for you. Passes go astray, you shank the ball, header skims off in the wrong direction. Same things happen no matter how high you go. What Carrick is doing here is choosing to praise the reaction you make after you screw up, not berate you for screwing up. The players pay close attention to what the gaffer says after the match. Each of them will have heard that and thought "yeah, I was off my game for a bit but we got there" and they will feel good about it.
As a manager/coach, Carrick hasn't really done anything tactically that's rocket science. He's switched to 4 at the back, dropped the defensive line a bit to cope with lack of pace and spotted that Akpom's best position is as a deep lying striker. The most important thing he has done is to take the fear factor away. You can see the players respond to him partly out of respect for what he has achieved as a player but mostly because he's made it plain that he will support them. That's what Southgate does with England. Like Southgate, Carrick has got the players playing to their level. We're not the best team in the league but we're definitely in that group you expect to be in or around the playoffs.
Thought we were slow and ponderous yesterday, when we sped things up we scored, Jones not at his best, need to practice crossing the ball, but he does win some free kicks, they kicked lumps off him all the time he was on the pitch, onwards and upwards
I think that we will go up this season, why? Because this man has and is educating the players in the finer points of the game, he is doing it on the training ground, and in their minds, I believe that we were in the habit of employing old Managers who had no intention of living in the area. Which, of course meant that they had 2-3 days away from the club, plus Friday with the Press, going down memory lane. Add Monday discussing the last Match, and you have a situation which is very familiar to us, in fact we can remember the very words which all those battered veterans repeated ad nauseum.
Boro for sure are not the best team in the Championship, but then who is? We may scrape into the playoffs, but one could say that about half the sides in this division. There is no side playing consistently well, so it’s all about momentum. I would challenge any tipster to come up with a better than 50% success rate, but that would go for Leagues One and Two also. Boro are on a good run at the moment, but often one defeat can lead to two or more in succession. I can’t see any side going on an unbeaten run of 7 or 8 matches, which perhaps is in Boro’s favour.
Usually home form is key, but I still wouldn’t put it past Boro to win at Burnley this week, but still fail to beat Wigan in the next home match. I’ve never liked drawn matches which seemingly Blackburn Rovers don’t either, the only team to yet draw a match this season. About half the teams in the Championship have scored more goals than Rovers and yet 16 teams have conceded more goals than them. The fact is though that their 12 wins would still have them 3rd in the table.
Perhaps the time has come to either increase the value of points for a win or the margin of victory, and award no points at all for draws especially goaiiess ones.
Interestingly, I cannot remember another season when a Boro striker was near the top of goal scoring charts. After Saturday, Chuba Akpom moved joint-top in the second tier goal charts.
I think we must go back to the McClaren era to find a Boro player to appear on the BBC top scorer list as below: https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/championship/top-scorers
Please note that Akpom has played up to seven matches less than most players on the chart.
Happy days to be a Boro fan. Up the Boro!
@jarkko Possibly Bamford would have been near the top under AK?
On current form you would have to rate Akpom as close to the best in the league. What impresses me is that he scores lots of boring goals. Gets into position, pokes the ball home from close range. Job's done. But he does this as well as dropping deep into midfield to win the ball or start an attack.
That said, Luton's goal yesterday started with Akpom not having a midfielder's instinct. Ref blew for a foul against him. It was a soft one and Akpom protested but while his back was turned and he was complaining, Luton took it quick. A natural midfielder or defender knows that the first thing you do in that situation is sit on the ball and prevent a free kick but Akpom is used to being much further up the pitch and rarely doing that. If Akpom prevents the quick free kick, the goal never happens.
Now, I bet under Wilder, that Wilder would have pointed this out in an effort to "improve" Akpom. Under Carrick, I suspect that one of the training sessions next week will be blocking off quick free kicks in midfield.
@deleriad You are right - thanks for reminding. One tends to skip the AK era for goal scoring, don't you?
Patrick Bamford (age 29):
2014–2015 → Middlesbrough (loan) 38 apps (17 goals)
2017–2018 Middlesbrough 47 (12)
Anyway, happy to see Akpom up there in the goal scoring charts. UTB!
Well, campers, let's hope everyone has a good week ahead. It's been a few days, so...
Ken - You're not the only one to have gone off to sleep and then woke up hours later, confused as to the time of day, in an armchair downstairs.
Jarkko - You know the answer. Legs don't get cold and don't need to be covered, so they weren't - as usual. It's basically my way of signalling to the manager "I'm here. You could always bring me on for a brief second half cameo. I should be good for a couple of minutes if we ever get 2 or 3 goals ahead...."
Plato, deleriad and others - Akpom has hit a rich vein of goalscoring and seems a greatly improved player these days. In fact most of the players seem to have improved since Chris Wilder left the club. That COULD be a coincidence but I suspect not. He seems to think about the game and has the knack of making decisions that turn out to have been correct, if not inspired. And maybe he has turned Matt Crooks into the definition of an Impact Player, or Supersub. Always good when a plan comes into fruition!
The Luton performance wasn't great (but the result was!). And that makes two wins in a row, separated by the World Cup break, where we have gone behinnd but then come back into the game before scoring a last minute winner. Performances are all well and good but it is the result that counts. A decent performance is either the icing on top of the cake (if the team HAS won) or a piece of consolation which might reduce the blow of a poor result because, even if the team comes away with no points in the bag, the performance may give hope of better things to come in the games to follow. But obviously three points AND a good performance in an exciting game is the gold standard, the ideal to which we look forward. I certainly came away from the Riverside fully content with the result against Luton and I would prefer that to a defeat where we "played quite well but were unlucky".
England - the team was apparently ranked 7th in the world so, I suppose, getting to the last 8 (Quarter Finals) is par for the course. Beating a team ranked higher than themselves is, I understand, something that England has failed to do in the knock-out stages of international competitions (The Euros, the World Cup) since 1966. In other words, in recent decades England tends to qualify for those competitions easily and tends then to get easily out of the group stages but, as soon as meeting a higher ranked country in the knock-out stages, England is defeated. That doesn't happen in club football, thank goodness, or there'd be little point in playing the games but we might as well award the silverware and fix the finishing order in each division at the start of each season. Manchester City might well eventually win this season's Premier League (though Arsenal is currently top of the league) but they were still defeated at home by Brentford just before the WC break.
In the national competitions outsiders Denmark won the 1992 Euros when they were drafted in as reserves at the last moment (to replace Yugoslavia as that country was involved in warfare when the country broke apart) though unusually England finished bottom of their group in this competition behind France, Denmark and Sweden; Denmark went on to beat Netherlands in the Semi-Final and a United Germany in the Final. And in the 2004 Euros Greece stunned everyone by winning (despite being in an initlal Group of Death with Portugal, Spain and Russia) beating France in the QF, the Czech Republic in the SF and then meeting and defeating Portugal again just as they had in their group game, in the Final. In the current World Cup Morocco (ranked 22) has already beated both Spain (ranked 7) and Portugal (ranked 9) in the knock-out stages so far held; and Croatia (ranked 12) memorably beat Brazil (ranked 1). So...other countries do occasionally beat higher ranked teams in knock-out stages, but England traditionally, and for a number of decades now, has not. So perhaps people should not be surprised by England's defeat by France, admittedly a very good international side.
At last the World Cup that should never had been played is over and Sky Sports decide to cut short the cricket highlights of the Second Test from Multan which produced another amazing finish and a win for England once again. I’ve loved football. from childhood and always been a Boro fan, but have watched almost as many matches at amateur level as I have following the Boro. Cricket was once England’s national sport and maybe still is in some people’s eyes. It has been played in Yorkshire since 1751 almost 120 years before the first FA Cup Final at Kennington Oval now the headquarters of Surrey CCC. Indeed many Football Clubs including Boro were formed by local cricket clubs wanting to keep fit during the winter months.
Now, as soon as Ben Stokes tries to make cricket great again with its proactive approach to Test Cricket, Sky Sports decide to continue discussing about the Football World Cup even on the Cricket Channel, and will now only show an hour’s recorded highlights of today’s exciting play from Multan. I think that Cricket and Ben Stoke deserve better than that, don’t you!
@forever-dormo I am already freezing indoors ...
Southgate has won six knockout games in major tournaments as Three Lions boss - the same number as England won in the 48 years before he took charge.
He should stay. But I know it will be difficult because of the pressures from the English press. Luckily it his own desision as he has a contract to run until December 2024.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/63939239
Up the Boro!
Jarkko - Despite the inevitable clamour for his head, I am not arguing for Southgate to go. England's performance was "par for the course" rather than a failure. In other words, get out of the group, win a knockout game then lose in the next round to the first team above England in the rankings. I have not seen today's newpapers but expect the red-tops (the Mirror, Sun, Express, Daily Mail) to be asking him to go. I'm not sure I agree with them.
Ken - the Test was a great listen live on BBCSounds (or on 5LiveSportsExtra). Two-nil up and the series won - IN Pakistan. Great performances so far.
@forever-dormo Southgate deserves to stay. Without a doubt.
I never understood he needed to go at Boro - and replaced by Strachan! It was strange as we were third or fourth and had just won a match.
Football is a strange sport at professional level. Up the Boro!
@forever-dormo Southgate deserves to stay. Without a doubt.
I never understood he needed to go at Boro - and replaced by Strachan! It was strange as we were third or fourth and had just won a match.
I agreed at the time. Southgate was broken by that point. Looking back, he made a far better job of keeping us up than he had any right to do. All the mistakes that Gibson made in appointing Southgate were repeated with Woodgate.
Also, Strachan had done a good job for a long time and was known for being someone who got the most out of a limited group. Turned out to be a horrific appointment but, at the time, it made sense.
How Southgate responded to this—he took a deep breath and went to improve himself—is a measure of the man. I hope he stays on for the Euros because he has done something that no England manager since Venables has managed: he's got the team playing to their level and reduced the soap opera around the team. (I say that not having seen the cup but having followed the news.)
In the meantime, the FA needs to be succession planning. Southgate has demonstrated how to manage the media circus and the team. In the next two years, up and coming managers have a chance to build a case. It won't be Carrick but if he gets us into the Premier league, keeps us there and then goes to successfully manage another club then he will be in contention for 2030.
I can understand OFB’s confidence, but there’s a long way to go in this season and I still think that Boro are still outsiders to reach the playoffs. At this stage of the season it is almost irrelevant who Boro play - there’s only 3 points available for every win. Yes things might be different in the last 4 matches of this season, but at the moment every match result cannot be regarded as a surprise as no side is better or worse than their opponents. Just accumulate as many points as possible before assuming that Boro are set for the playoffs. Burnley may be the one outstanding team at the moment, but almost any side is capable of reaching the playoffs or indeed be caught in a relegation fight. Also any club reaching the playoffs has an even chance of promotion in my opinion, but also in for a torrid time in the Premier League next season. I don’t get too excited when Boro win, nor despondent when Boro lose, after all it’s only football and I have much more to worry about in general than football at my time of life.
Boro up to 12th, sandwiched between Blunderland (also 30 points, but with a game in hand & a better goal difference [+6]) & the Hatters (30 pu ts, but a 0 GD).
Boro still 12th & sandwiched between Blunderland & Luton, but there's been a very slight shift as a result of the Baggies' 2-1 win at the Stadium of Sh1te (their fourth on the trot under Corberán, apparently): same number of points, but a GD now of +1...