exmil This weekends match is week 33 for Bristol City and week 31 for Boro because of postponed and rearranged games, Fulham and Sheff Utd I believe.
Thanks for that exmil. So if what I have read is correct and Crooks is on 9 Yellow, then it is probably unlikely to see him getting through the next two games without a booking and avoiding a 2 match suspension.
I wonder if CW will take that into account?
Most football fans are suddenly getting excited about the Championship, and quite rightly so. From being a dreary league with a poor standard of football, suddenly many clubs have upped their games making for a grandstand finish. However looking at the relegation first it’s now clear in my opinion that only 4 clubs are involved as usually wins are harder to come by for clubs in relegation places and that none of the bottom 4 are likely to reach the points per game of 46, never mind the 50 point mark unless something extraordinary happens.
But it’s a different matter regarding the playoff positions where as Chris Wilder has pointed out even 16 clubs could still reach that coveted final playoff place. That’s why even Swansea City should not be discounted. With only 14 matches remaining Bristol City may not have much to play for but pride, but that doesn’t mean that they will not test Boro this Saturday. Ashton Gate has been a reasonably happy hunting ground for Boro this century with 4 wins and 4 defeats in 9 meetings with the 4-0 win in January 2011 being Boro’s best ever win there. Boro should win as only Stoke City of likely playoff contenders have lost there this season. But both Fulham and Blackburn were held to 1-1 draws so Boro take the Robins lightly at their peril. Nevertheless I do expect Boro to win if they play anywhere near their recent form possibly 2-1.
Another good night for Boro in the championship with QPR and Coventry getting beat,also Shef Utd getting held at home.
Come on BORO.
Looking at this document from the FA the 32 games is for the Premier League in the EFL the cut off is 37 games so it is a big ask for Crooks not to be booked in the next 7 games. The info can be found in the pdf at the bottom of the page.
https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/discipline/player-essentials
Looking at this document from the FA the 32 games is for the Premier League in the EFL the cut off is 37 games so it is a big ask for Crooks not to be booked in the next 7 games. The info can be found in the pdf at the bottom of the page.
https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/discipline/player-essentials
Yes I agree and it looks like Riley McGree is going to be getting some game time sooner rather than later. Let’s hope he doesn’t get injured given Payero’s absence. 😎
Who would be a football pundit? David Prutton is Sky’s pundit on Championship matches yet his overall forecasts show a less than 50% accuracy. For this week’s 3 matches he has failed to guess the result correctly never mind the score. The sophisticated five three.eight computer system has Boro finishing 4th by the end of the season with Sheffield United 3rd, whilst only a month ago it had quite a different prognosis. It’s not about ‘dropping’ points, it’s about accumulating points. The only teams that have dropped points are Derby County with 21 and Reading with 6, every other side started the season with zero points. Some might imagine that Sheffield United dropped 2 points last night, when in reality they gained a point though admittedly only have one less match to play than they had before last night. I’m no pundit but I’d be surprised if at least 2 of the sides outside the current playoff positions are not in playoff positions by Easter.
It’s all about momentum and confidence. After 4 wins in a row QPR have only accumulated one more (against Boro) in their last 4 matches. Newcastle United have suddenly won 3 consecutive matches after only winning once in their first 20 matches whilst Sunderland have accumulated only one more point in their last 4 matches. Since losing 0-5 to high fliers Leyton Orient, Hartlepool went 12 matches without a league win but have since won 3 in a row, whilst Orient have accumulated only 9 points from their last 14 matches. They say that League tables don’t lie, but that is untrue until the season is completed. Hopefully Boro will continue their good season on their own merits without wishing Schadenfreude on their competitors. At the moment I prefer a bit of Lipsos Schweigen until the end of the season.
This is an extract regarding yellow cards:
The current rules this season stipulate that any player accumulating a certain number of yellow cards will face disciplinary action in the form of match bans. It works on the following principles:
- Five yellows accumulated before match week 19 results in a one-match ban.
- Ten yellows accumulated by week 32 will result in a two-match ban.
- Fifteen yellows by week 38 means a three-match ban.
- Twenty yellows in a season can result in the Regulatory Commission punishing the player in a manner that they deem to be most fitting.
Generally, the suspensions laid out above refer to league matches only, not tournaments.
Come on BORO.
See below:
https://thepfsa.co.uk/football-discipline-yellow-cards-red-cards-and-suspensions-explained/
Come on BORO.
Grove Hill Wallah
Thanks again for the latest book you have sent me.
Ken Smith
See below:
https://thepfsa.co.uk/football-discipline-yellow-cards-red-cards-and-suspensions-explained/
Come on BORO.
@exmil.
This looks like it is a PFSA document that was written for the 2020/21 season.
Take a look at the table of the number of different cards issued in each of the previous 5 seasons that is at the bottom of the page with the extract you posted. The last season it quotes is 2019/20. That is why I think this document is for last season, not this season.
If you have a look at the pdf available on the link to the FA site that @MW in Darwin posted, that is current for this season and it definitely says it is 10 yellows over the first 37 matches in the EFL that will yield a 2 match ban, but 10 cautions over 32 matches in the Premiership for the same sanction.
Jarkko
Interesting to read your blog yesterday on the mention of Redcar in a Finnish newspaper. I suppose the main features of the town are the Race Course, Locke Park and the 12 mile stretch of the beach from South Gare (the mouth of the River Tees) to Saltburn. There is also a Lifeboat Museum which houses the oldest lifeboat in the world which was first launched in 1802 and in use until 1860.
I’ve spent the last few weeks perusing through some 11,500 photographs and coincidentally came across 2 separate holidays I spent in 2010 to Copenhagen and Malmö, and one in Helsinki and across the Baltic Sea to Tallin. I don’t know how familiar you are with your capital city, but one of my visits was to your national stadium which housed the Summer Olympic Games in 1952 and was the first Olympiad I watched on a small 12 inch (30 centimetres) black and white television set when I was 14 years old. It was probably before you were born, but the main event I can remember was the Czech runner Emil Zatopek winning the Marathon having already won the 10,000 and 5,000 metres events. There is a statue outside of Paavo Nurmi (the flying Finn) who I must confess I’d never heard of who won 9 gold and 3 silver medals in 3 Olympiads. I guess he must have been a National hero in your county at the time.
Close by if I remember correctly in a park in the Taka-Toolo district is a statue of Jean Sibelius which some kind person took my photograph leaning against and one of Lasse Viren in the Meilahti district. Of course I remember Viren well as he won 4 gold medals in the 1972 and 1976 Summer Olympics. On my visit I also recall spending some time in Kamppi Square and visiting the Kappeli Restaurant for a meal in the Esplanade Park where there is the Vart Land Memorial, and also visiting Klippan Island.
Now I don’t know how much you are familiar with Helsinki, but there was so much to see and I always fancied visiting the many lakes in your country but never got round to them and sadly I never will now as I’m permanently housebound, but I still have happy memories of Scandinavia and all the Baltic Countries.
Many regards
Ken Smith.
Powmill that seems somewhat strange. When would the three match ban kick in then, between match 37 and match 46 which would be the last game I assume.
Ken, I went to Copenhagen in 2011 and Helsinki in 2015. Unfortunately I was only in Helsinki for 3 days (one of which was very wet) as I had been to San Sebastian 3 months earlier. That short stay annoys me still as I could really have afforded a longer time and like you I wish I had taken the chance to travel further inland. I went to the Olympic Stadium and the boat trips reminded me of Windermere, apart from the larger ferries!
Thanks for the starter OFB. You are only a couple of months older than me so you really are quite young.
I am still surprised how Wilder has changed us from a team that was trying to avoid defeat and maybe nick a win into a team that goes out to attack with such success so far, even before the January additions to the squad. The atmosphere in the Riverside is a lot better with a larger crowd who have actually enjoyed the match. It also makes my long journeys home a lot easier.
I am wondering if and when an opposition manager will put 2 defenders to mark Jones. That did happen when he originally played as a winger but as a wingback he seems to find more space to surprise defences and they don't have the chance to get both close enough together to block him. I can see Pearson having looked at the way we play and wanting to stop Jones from putting in good crosses but don't know if Bristol City have the players who are good enough to do the job. His crosses have been vital to so many of our goals but, if needed, does the rest of the team who have also been been playing well have the ability to create and score without his assistance?
Sadly I can't overcome my lifetime of pessimism and will never forecast a win but I do now feel ever so slightly hopeful!
Powmill that seems somewhat strange. When would the three match ban kick in then, between match 37 and match 46 which would be the last game I assume.
Pedro, 3 match ban will be given if a player reaches 15 bookings by the end of the regular league season. That is before the playoffs.
Should a player reach 20 bookings in the regular league season, the punishment will be decided by a disciplinary panel.
@Ken Yes, I am very familiar with Helsinki. I was born there but moved away as a three year old to Vantaa, where I have lived ever since. This is just 20 to 30 min from Helsinki City center - actually next to the International Airport of Helsinki. Beside I studied in there, too.
Amazing that you can write all the names of places correctly after all those years you visited. Only the dots missing from your keyboard in a name like Taka-Töölö (Sibelius).
My father and oldest brother (b. 1946) attended the Olympics in 1952 but I was born nine years later, so I missed them. But I still have the black and white photos taken at the stadium in the games by my father. Czech Emil Zatopek is a legend in here, too.
Paavo Nurmi was an older athlete. As you said he won 9 gold and 3 silver medals in 3 Olympiads and was ranked with Pele in the top three of all time sportmen a while ago internationally. I think he was the first long-distance runner in the world who really trained scientifically.
He went on to run in the USA to earn some money later in his career, too. Hence he was banned from his last Olympic games - so he could have won even more medals!
Paavo Nurmi lighted the Olympic flare in the 1952 Olympics. He was on the 10 Finnish Mark note in here before we switched to Euro notes. Also Jean Sibelius was on the 100 Mark note.
Thanks for the summary of Redcar. I hope to pay a visit to Teesside in August or September. Depending on COVID, of course. Up the Boro!
Jarkko
I can’t take too much credit for remembering the places I have visited as I always recorded the names of streets, districts, etc from maps at the time and printed them onto the developed photographs as I inserted them in my albums. In later years I used my iPad instead of my camera to take photographs so wasn’t always able to remember places I had visited. It was easier when I visited countries that used what I call the Romantic languages such as France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Cuba, but found Germany, Iceland, Holland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, etc much harder to remember without reference to my travelogue diary which lists every city that I have visited or stayed in, all in chronological order.
I’m a rather meticulous sort of guy, probably due to my accountancy background, and have spent as much time recording all my holidays as I have done with Boro’s and Castleford’s matches throughout my lifetime. My wife used to say “Why do you bother recording so much detail? You’ll never look at them again.” But how wrong she was! Especially after she died, as nostalgia has been a great hobby and comfort to me in my dotage.
Just wondering if the game will go ahead on Saturday.
Bristol Is forecasted to have significant storms and damage in the area over next few days.
If things do settle down Boro can always make things a bit Wilder!
OFB
Just wondering if the game will go ahead on Saturday.
Bristol Is forecasted to have significant storms and damage in the area over next few days.
If things do settle down Boro can always make things a bit Wilder!
OFB
OFB, forecast for Bristol on Saturday 1500 - 1700 is light showers, 7 degrees and winds of 22 mph, a summers day in Boro 😂
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/2654675
Come on BORO.
For me there is a key metric of our improvement and increased creativity under Wilder that I haven't seen commented upon elsewhere.
It's the fact that most of our recent goals have been tap-ins.
Think of Crooks' goals against Derby and Man U, or Watmore's 4th against Derby. And the ogs in our last two games which were conceded to prevent Boro players from getting the final touch.
It's a mark of the really good teams like Man City and Liverpool that they don't rely on spectacular strikes, or moments of individual brilliance - welcome though they are - to achieve their objectives. Scoring becomes a much simpler operation: the final act of the creativity, movement and creation of space that may have their origins far from goal. In that respect at least we are becoming more like the elite teams. We are playing what is recognisably the same game at our own level of competence.
This is such a far cry from the Pulis metric of counting the number of crosses we achieved as a measure of our attacking intent, and his habitual criticism of so many of our strikers for not getting on the end of them; or Warnock's similar desire to put the ball in the mix, and hope that something falls for us, to say nothing of our long-standing over-reliance on set-pieces rather than open play to get us a vital goal, that it really represents a completely different way of conceptualising the game.
Wilder's achievement in this regard is, of course, well understood and almost universally appreciated.
Strange then that the noticeable difference in the way we are now scoring goals compared with many seasons past has not been more widely commented upon.
For me there is a key metric of our improvement and increased creativity under Wilder that I haven't seen commented upon elsewhere.
It's the fact that most of our recent goals have been tap-ins.
Think of Crooks' goals against Derby and Man U, or Watmore's 4th against Derby. And the ogs in our last two games which were conceded to prevent Boro players from getting the final touch.
It's a mark of the really good teams like Man City and Liverpool that they don't rely on spectacular strikes, or moments of individual brilliance - welcome though they are - to achieve their objectives. Scoring becomes a much simpler operation: the final act of the creativity, movement and creation of space that may have their origins far from goal. In that respect at least we are becoming more like the elite teams. We are playing what is recognisably the same game at our own level of competence.
This is such a far cry from the Pulis metric of counting the number of crosses we achieved as a measure of our attacking intent, and his habitual criticism of so many of our strikers for not getting on the end of them; or Warnock's similar desire to put the ball in the mix, and hope that something falls for us, to say nothing of our long-standing over-reliance on set-pieces rather than open play to get us a vital goal, that it really represents a completely different way of conceptualising the game.
Wilder's achievement in this regard is, of course, well understood and almost universally appreciated.
Strange then that the noticeable difference in the way we are now scoring goals compared with many seasons past has not been more widely commented upon.
A good post Len. I suspect however that many of us are just glad that we are playing and scoring more freely and have not analysed the why but what you say is quite correct. 😎
That’s a very shrewd observation, Len, and one that I hadn’t considered before. Our passing game has been a joy to behold recently and, if we pass the ball into the net at the end of those moves, we’ll all keep smiling.
That’s a really good point, Len - obvious when you say it and yet it hadn’t occurred to me at all.
For me there is a key metric of our improvement and increased creativity under Wilder that I haven't seen commented upon elsewhere.
It's the fact that most of our recent goals have been tap-ins.
Completely agree. In fact I would go further and say this is the first time we have had an actual plan for attacking as a team in open play since forever. Even under Karanka we would defend as a team but attack as individuals.
- Warnock. Win a knockdown or score a worldie
- Woodgate. He actually tried to come up with something, he just didn't know how to do it
- Pulis. Keep 7 players back, give it to Adama.
- Karanka. Keep the ball and wait for the other side to die of boredom.
- Mowbray. Wanted to play the Mowbray way but never had the players to do it convincingly.
- Strachan. Kick and run
- Southgate. Wenger-lite but without the players to do it.
- McLaren. We never really had an identity under him. Sort of compact counter-attacking is how I remember.
- Robbo. Buy all the players.
- Mowbray. Wanted to play the Mowbray way but never had the players to do it convincingly.
- Southgate. Wenger-lite but without the players to do it.
- McLaren. We never really had an identity under him. Sort of compact counter-attacking is how I remember.
- Robbo. Buy all the players.
We had the right managers at the wrong time. The desent ones did not have money and the ones who did not have a plan had money.
Monk was missing from the list but he didn't know even how to defend nor attack ...
Up the Boro!
Monk was missing from the list
That's pretty much the definition of Monk.
Many thanks for the very generous comments.
The corollary to my tentative theory about the type of goals we have scored under Wilder is that the goals we have conceded recently have been of a very different character.
They seem to have involved a high degree of exceptionalism, the result of either out-of-the-ordinary individual skill or unusual mistakes.
Chair's goal for QPR and Bird's for Derby, for example, were both wonderful strikes from outside of the area. In all probability both players are unlikely to score better goals all season. Indeed Bird's volley was only his second goal of the season. At Old Trafford, even Jadon Sancho had it all to do in terms of individual skill when he put United ahead.
Similarly improbable was the Paddy McNair air- kick which led to Blackburn's goal, a mistake so out of character that it led to very little criticism. No one could remember an error of similar magnitude since Paddy joined the club.
Lumley's giveaway goal at QPR was a different matter Not only predictable, but predicted on here, and understandably so given similar near misses at Mansfield and Old Trafford. It's one of the main reasons why his position has come under so much question and why the signing of a quality keeper remains a No 1 priority for most supporters.
At the moment we can only hope that our keeper has learned from his mistakes. But is there anyone out there who does not fear that they may recur in games of even more vital importance?
So there we have it. Boro under Wilder appear to be a side capable of scoring goals through teamwork, the goals themselves being the final element of the creation of movement and space. By contrast the goals scored against us have tended to come about not through our opponents picking us apart, but through exceptional moments of either individual skill or individual error against which no team can legislate.
Admittedly this hypothesis is one that can be blown apart at any time. Even tomorrow at Bristol.
But for the moment it is one that can give us a high degree of optimism that Chris Wilder really has effected a substantial systemic change.
If it really is the case that his emphasis upon the paramount importance of unity, not only on the field but throughout the club, inclusive of the supporters, is already yielding observable results in something as granular as the kind of goals we score and those we concede then we can have some confidence that the club has what we have precisely lacked for far too long: a model, a way of thinking about our club and a way of playing that can sustain us for some time into the future.
My previous post was written before I had seen deleriad's, with which I entirely agree.
Many thanks to Deleriad and Len for thoroughly interesting posts which are appreciated.
There are so many good and interesting contributors, too many to single out on this blog but we all know that is why we all enjoy having this site as our daily (hourly!) read.
Well done Diasborians take a bow.
OFB
Len's observation hadn't occurred to me, either. But it's good, isn't it? I love a tap-in, me!