What a team. Celebrating with a rare mid-week glass of red.
I hope Harry Kane and Cristiano Ronaldo get on well, there can’t be much room left in Dael Fry’s pocket!
What a brilliant all round display from Boro that was. Superb.
Maybe Josh Coburn is the finisher we’ve lacked?
Wow! Another fantastic FA Cup victory by Boro - thoroughly deserved with a superb team performance from start to finish - no weak links and everyone gave everything. Don't know how Jonny Howson kept that level for 2 hours and what a finish from Josh Coburn to seal it. I'm exhausted after that but need to be up in six hours - I'd try and go to bed once my heart-rate returns to something capable of sleep. A great night 🙂
Wow wow wow
Johny howsen a real captain tonight
And the riverside shaking at its foundations what an atmosphere
Well worth getting up at 5:30 am to watch a great performance. At one point the commentators here, Martin Tyler and Clive Allen , said you would be hard pressed to tell which was the Premier League team. Just need to wrap them up in cotton wool until Saturday. Hopefully Luton go to extra time tonight as well.
Great victory and young Coburn showing the other strikers how to hit the ball when you get the chance.
However if anybody deserved that tonight, it had to be Mr Gibson.
Good game, good game !! - you know what I mean ‘ Arry!!
Over the course of the 120 minutes Boro deserved to win and missed two good headed chances and a couple of others. Spurs missed fewer and were disappointing after a controlling half hour.
All players deserve credit - even you know who !!- our most berated player.
Just hope this is a start of a run of victories - and Crooks and Howson are fit for Saturday
Philip of Huddersfield
The date for the 6th Round is 19th March so the home game against Cardiff will have to be arranged and the semi final is on the Easter weekend when we play Bournemouth and Huddersfield. If we get that far it will make a busy end to the season.
Josh Coburn's record is excellent 270 minutes played 4 goals.
Right guys, it’s 0200 in the morning, I have been to so many bars after the match and danced with so many women, if I still had a wife I would be in a lot of trouble lmao. What a game and what an atmosphere in the Riverside, I will never forget it just like Basel and Steaua Bucharest matches I have been privileged to watch first hand, I am so lucky UTB
Come on BORO.
By the way I will be 71 this month and going strong UTB.
Come on BORO.
Spurs Man U can we play you every week ?
OFB
many a true word is oft spoken in jest! I feel that we look very comfortable playing a 'Premier League' stye of play. Our challenge is to get there amidst the battle of the Championship.
There are loads of players who had wonderful games but for me one of the biggest takeaways from this game is how fit we are. We genuinely lasted better than Spurs which says a great deal for the conditioning regime under Wilder's team. The way that Tavernier, Crooks and Jones were just as fast in extra time and able to get up and down the pitch in support puts a huge amount of pressure on the opposition. We just need to work on how we manage the movement of the ball and the players when we have breakaways. A number of times we don't quite have the pieces linked up as it was with Coburn who wasn't quite there when Balogun crossed (or shot) and Josh C just missed it.
If I was picking MOM candidates, I would go with Fry, Hewson, Tavernier and Crooks but it's not really fair to leave out others who had wonderful periods of play.
What a wonderful evening (or morning here in Sydney).
At home to Everton or Borehamwood for the quarter final, please.
UTB
Unfortunate it looks like Josh Coburn won't be able to play on Saturday.
How can he? He must be in clound nine and his feet do not touch ground in a week!
Think about it. Playing in front of a sell-out Riverside, scoring the only goal of the cup tie against Tottenham, what a beaty against a World Cup winning goalkeeper and playing generally very well. Even better than Harry Kane.
The boy deserved that. So he cannot play again so soon, can he?
Up the Boro!
What a performance from Jonny Howson! Absolutely magic. Clearly the MoM and rightly so.
I really enjoyed his interview after the match, too. I think he has grown up in his role as a captain now.
And somehow he reminds about Grant Leadbitter so much in the interviews now. Similar voice and ideas. On the field they might be a bit different but when speaking to the media, very similar in my opinion.
And leading with example. They both do. Up the Boro!
Well worth getting up at 5:30 am to watch a great performance. At one point the commentators here, Martin Tyler and Clive Allen , said you would be hard pressed to tell which was the Premier League team. Just need to wrap them up in cotton wool until Saturday. Hopefully Luton go to extra time tonight as well.
Not to put a dampener on it, but if these FA Cup ties were Premier League games that would have been two Herculean efforts for two draws! You can see how far the team needs to come to win games at that higher level, even at our best.
Still, unimaginable progress since Chris Wilder took over. Fantastic.
Well that was an early 70th birthday present and got the party started a few hours earlier than planned.
A great all round team performance but Howson and Fry were outstanding for me and what a composed finish by young Josh.
Can anyone explain to me after that performance how we got turned over at Barnsley?
I just hope that Luton have to go to extra time and that we can take three points on Saturday, as not to do so will take some of the shine off last nights thoroughly deserved win. 😎
@K P Congrats to Spain. Perfect present, wasn't it? Boro is a family club and they remember their fans, too. UBT!
Well that was good. I think there must have been 3 Jonny Howsons on the field because everywhere I looked there was another one of him.
The nit-picking stuff. We did make some of our routine defensive errors but got away with them. The way Spurs set up also played into our hands. Where we have struggled against Blackburn, Bristol City and Barnsley is coping with them pressing our midfield. Spurs sat back and waited to counter. Any manager watching that game will say, don't play against us like Spurs did. Strange to say but we may find Luton a much more difficult proposition. On the plus side, their name doesn't start with a B so we should be ok.
From our side, everything is a positive. Even the injury to Connolly meant that Coburn came on. If Connolly had had that chance I would have expected a decent effort that missed the target. Coburn may not be ready to start but in that match he did everything Wilder asks for from a striker: he pressed, he dropped back to link-up and he scored a goal.
Great to see Bola back. I don't know what Tav and Jones eat but they look like they could still be running this morning and what a fantastic midfield burst from Tav in the 87th minute: it deserved a goal. Crooks was a bit rusty early doors but he gives us so much more balance and, of course, he was the one who laid on the assist to Coburn.
Fry was immense. Dijksteel is a Jekyl and Hyde player and today it was good Dijksteel who combined playing on the right wing, trickery and solid defensive work. McNair does make 1 bad error each game but he worked so hard for the team and one early block in particular was a goal saver.
I suspect that's peak Lumley. Hopefully he can maintain a level that's closer to that than normal Lumley. Some excellent reaction saves including the potential OG from Crooks which took superb perception and reflexes. I think what happens is that Lumley is a big, ungainly lump and he has to be mentally right in the zone to get his body and feet moving fast enough. I like his character and he has some real aggro about him.
Sporar does do a lot of hard, unglamorous work. If he could only find his shooting boots. Watmore keeps the opposition defence honest. So far those two are the only pair that have any signs of an understanding. That's possibly a side-effect of the striker rotation. I think for the future that those two should start then Balogun or Coburn come on as first change for Watmore. We talk a lot about the difficulty of stepping up from the U23s. Balogun has had 10 games and the best part of 8 hours for us during which he has managed two assists. Coburn is a year younger, played 1 more game but only had 5.5 hours on the pitch during which he has scored 4 goals. (Connolly 8 games, 550 minutes, 1 goal.) Frankly, right now, Coburn is the one who is making the case to be a regular. Keeping him around the team rather than loaning him out is starting to look like a really good decision.
Bamba and Peltier: I think they're great. You turn to them at the end and they will give you 100% from the second they're on the pitch. This may be the final season for them both but you couldn't ask for better pros.
It feels like a happy ship and this is the most enjoyable we have been to watch for a long, long time. Feels like a new chapter could be starting.
So just one win away from a Wembley semi-final.
The draw will be made on Thursday evening at 7.45pm ahead of Everton's fifth-round tie with Boreham Wood. UTB!
Well, Ladies and Gentlemen - that was some performance by Boro, wasn't it? The atmosphere in the ground was great, all seats were full apart from the rows left empty to create a barrier between the home and away supporters, and Coburn's goal to seal the win was an absolute belter! If he scores more goals per minute played than any other Boro player, maybe if he got more minutes on the field then Boro as a team would score more goals and win more games (which, after all, is the main objective).
An unreservedly successful night. Although there was one occasion when Lumley almost caused me to have a heart attack, he performed well over the rest of the game and made some good saves.
What we can say with confidence is that, Fulham or not, there are no teams we will meet in the Championship that match the quality of players or expectation that Manchester United and Spurs bring to the pitch. So, without underestimating the opposition we will meet in the day-to-day Championship games, we should be confident and on the front foot in those Championship games to come.
Deleriad,
Good post. The only thing I’d disagree with is Djijsteel being Jekyl and Hide. I think he’s only had maybe two bad games since Wilder came in, fewer than many.
In fact, I like him in Wilder’s system so much that I wonder whether Bola should do the same on the left of central defence. That would further help the balance with a left-footer who is also comfortable getting forward. From an attacking point of view, I like the idea of Bola, Tav and McGree as the left-sided three.
That would leave McNair as first reserve for for about six spots in the team.
I thoroughly enjoyed last night. I’ve also enjoyed the media reaction to it today. Even Shearer was impressed!
The atmosphere and the crowd were both marvellous. As someone mentioned, it brought back shades of Steaua. There’s nothing quite like a full and bouncing Riverside to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end! There were obviously loads of people there who hadn’t been for ages. Let’s hope Boro convinced a few of them - nay, thousands of them- to turn up from now on for the bread and butter Championship, though I think Neil Bausor’s master stroke was to offer the Spurs tickets at affordable prices.
Now, who do we all want in the quarter final? I’m saying anybody but Chelsea, Liverpool or Man City, but I think at home we can give anyone a run for their money. I would quite like another trip to Wembley, even if it’s only for a semi-final!
It was brilliant to see Bola back. Neil Taylor is obviously sound defensively, but mostly offers little going forward. Last night, for example, he frequently passed the ball backwards or across to the central defenders as soon as he received it. That’s not a criticism - he did his job preventing Spurs attacks as well as anyone and was often immediately faced with pressure from Romero or another Spurs player. But Bola instantly offered us another outlet and got forward much more. I’d be inclined to make him first choice wing-back from now on, whilst recognising that he’ll probably need a couple of games to get fully up-to-speed.
But well done to everybody at MFC for marvellous entertainment and a superb result!
Another good post deleriad and backed up by Andy's perceptive comments.
I have to agree as much as Balogun has something, considering his time on the pitch now, I thought once again he disappointed last night. Also as said, I certainly do not believe Connolly would have scored with that chance. I do not think I have seen Balogun hit the ball along the floor yet, they are always too high.
Coburn is quite tall and as he develops could turn out to be a useful addition into the matchday squad.
Bola at left CB I am not sure of. Like Dijksteel and McNair he is not that tall, plus he would have to improve his injury levels.
However Luton will be a challenge. Any slip ups and lack of application from the off will cost us in more ways than one.
Deleriad,
Good post. The only thing I’d disagree with is Djijsteel being Jekyl and Hide. I think he’s only had maybe two bad games since Wilder came in, fewer than many.
In fact, I like him in Wilder’s system so much that I wonder whether Bola should do the same on the left of central defence. That would further help the balance with a left-footer who is also comfortable getting forward. From an attacking point of view, I like the idea of Bola, Tav and McGree as the left-sided three.
That would leave McNair as first reserve for for about six spots in the team.
There in lies the conundrum, how do you get Bola, Tavernier and McGree into the left of the team given that Dijksteel, Crooks and Jones are in my view nailed on for the right hand side with Howson the holding. Midfielder?
I don’t believe you can, unless as you suggest that you play Bola on the left of the back three and drop McNair. The latter is far superior to Bola in that position so you play Bola as wing back as replacement for Taylor who offers very little offensively.
It then comes down to McGree or Tavernier or play both with one up front so that either McGree or Tav operate as a 10 playing off a loan striker. Might be worth trying in the next round of the FA cup to see if it works. 😎
From dejected on Saturday to delighted on Tuesday. Four days in the life of a BORO supporter. Great to be in a full Riverside and enjoy the atmosphere. The cost and the hassle of travelling and being away from home again didn't matter. My seat gave me a good view of Coburn hammering the ball into the side of the goal for the well deserved win. I don't think any of our other strikers could have matched that.
When I got back to the hotel, the bar was full of people drowning their sorrows so I just went to my room and made do with a coffee. Didn't fall asleep until after 3am!
Back to Middlesbrough on Saturday for what looks to be a hard Championship match against current top away form team, Luton, followed by four away league fixtures now that the Cardiff home game has to be rearranged.
I think that Coburn is the answer to our lack of a striker. His rate of scoring is (per minute) better than most, his height is a problem for defenders, he is quick thinking in the box, I have seen him score three goals, all different, one a towering header (top corner, keeper no chance) one running onto a pass across the box, ball too fast, no problem, he threw himself onto the floor and drilled it with his trailing leg, and Spurs, had he done a routine firm shot, the keeper would have parried it, but he had other ideas and hammered it, and the keeper was not to far from getting something on the ball. Young strikers are at their best when Young, they have no idea how difficult it is.