From what I heard CW hardly made any appearances on the training ground. Mainly sitting in his office preparing his press reports.
OFB
Excellent result yesterday particularly in front of a full house and moved up to 10 th in the League - even though they could go down 2 or 3 places depending on the teams below them with games in hand. Nevertheless, teams above Boro will now be looking over their shoulders.
I’m also keeping track on Huddersfield’s former coach( Corboran) , now at West Brom and positively charging up the League with the most points in the last half dozen games.
Returning to Boro, it looks as though MC has a clear way of playing and likes a settled team. Who would have guessed that Dikjsteel, Bola and particularly McNair would have very little game time ? McNair has certainly fallen from grace from being a star player according to the Gazette, but not in my eyes as he is not a commanding defender like eg Lenihan, nor a creative midfielder. Perhaps , some Clubs will be keen to take him on loan but I’d resist it as some players will have a dip in form and/ get injured and so he will be needed.
It looks as though Muniz’ days may be numbered when he didn’t even make the subs bench yesterday- I’d let him go but urge not to get a ‘ youth player’ from a Premiership team- the yardstick is any attacking player should be more experienced than Coburn as otherwise the Club might as well ended his spell at Bristol Rovers.
Philip of Huddersfield
I had a look back because I remembered saying this after the Barnsley match
Akpom did well and seems to have an instinct for scoring.
At that point, Akpom had scored in both his first matches for us and looked a decent find. He then promptly collapsed in form and confidence.
Looking at match reports, in his first two matches he played as part of a front 2 with Britt. In the next match, Britt got hooked off at half-time and Akpom was used as a lone striker for the rest of the season. A short amount of poking around shows that he did okish with PAOK when playing as the striker in a 4-2-3-1 but a lot of clubs seem to have used him as a target man because he's quite strong and can hold the ball up. But when he does this, his scoring record is abysmal.
When Leo he brought him back in after injury, he tended to play as part of a front 2 with Muniz and did well. Under Carrick he has gone to the next level playing as a deep-lying striker. Watching his goals: they're all sort of boring. He arrives in the right place at the right time and knocks it in with whatever body part is nearest. He's definitely an instinctive striker; he can struggle a bit if he has time to think or is taking a penalty. He also seems rarely to score worldies.
Playing as a deep-lying striker is like a different version of being a target man. He gets the ball, holds of defenders, lays it off with an excellent range of passing then makes a bee line for the goal.
Nearly all of the credit for his resurgence goes to Akpom's mental strength. A lot of players would have crumbled but he kept faith with himself. Partly it's a lucky accident. Although Wilder gets deserved criticism and didn't have any inclination to bring back Akpom, when he ran out of strikers and played him, he played him in a front 2 and it was a revelation. I sometimes wonder, if Akpom hadn't have got injured, whether he would have scored the goals that kept Wilder in a job. The manager who ought to get brickbats is Warnock. Akpom scored goals playing in a 2 then failed when asked to play as a target man. If Warnock had persisted with Britt and Akpom up front, then we might have seen this version of Akpom 2 years ago. That though is history.
Clearly, Akpom has never had a scoring patch like this and maybe it will turn out to be a fluke. I think not. If we keep playing to his strengths he has the skill, strength and creativity allied to a poacher's instinct to be one of the top scoring strikers in the Championship. He will have barren patches but he clearly has immense mental strength and I would back him to come through them.