I must say, it is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black, complaining about watering the pitch before a game... or do we all have short memories now as well 🤔
I must say, it is a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black, complaining about watering the pitch before a game... or do we all have short memories now as well 🤔
I know all teams water the pitch prior to games but did you see the amount of standing water on the pitch prior to the game or maybe it was just because of the state of the pitch.
Come on BORO.
I disagree but as I say it’s each to their own in terms of what they want from their team.
When I say Man City, I’m obviously using hyperbole because if we literally played like them we’d be targeting the Champions League rather than the Championship playoffs.
Obviously everyone wants that but that really is having your cake and eating it and far more than I’d expect or even hope for from Boro. Ever.
For smaller/less well resourced clubs like ours I think there is a sliding scale between wanting results and wanting good football - it’s not usually possible to have both.
I could never enjoy us getting beat every week - what football fan could? - but where I am perhaps more of a purist is that I don’t base my pride in the club and take my main pleasure from it from results. I need “enough” results and a competitive team but would take fewer points for a side that can pass through teams, dribble past opponents and attack with pace and purpose with the ball largely on the grass.
Perhaps more pertinent options would have been a team like ours and finish 8th (around about where we will) or better quality attacking play but finish, say 11th. The same answer applies for me.
Or better still, just look at Barnsley: smaller club than us, far better football than we play and likely to finish above us too. Barnsley boys having their cake and eating it 😀
This isn’t me trying have a dig at Warnock who I think has worked wonders in the circumstances but goodness me, I’d love to have a team worth watching one of these days.
Interesting comment and it made me think a bit about my approach to the club. I used to be solely about the results and didn’t care how it happened. Now I really want to see them win but can acknowledge when a game is pretty awful. When that happens I look at the reasons and, as I’ve written above, I think that a really bad pitch can negate any attempts to play decent football. Would this have been a classic on a good surface........probably not but we have played well enough at times this season to suggest that we have the ability to play good football so I am not apologetic about the odd terrible game. If I’m honest, the game that gave me as much pleasure as any other game this season was the draw at Norwich when we showed a collective spirit and intelligence to completely upset a very good team. So, if I feel that we have good football in us then I’m happy. If I felt that we were just a team of cloggers I doubt that I’d stay up to 2 o’clock in the morning to watch our games.
This team has enough good players to play good football and they’ve managed to do that in patches. As long as our front players are fit and able to play, I’m looking forward to some good football through the rest of the season. I don’t think that we’ll quite make the playoffs but, in the end, that won’t matter and I hope that NW stays because it’s good to see an intelligent manager leading the club in a sensible direction.
Utb
Good and intelligent post Selwynoz.
Of course there is the different motivation for the clubs themselves, for whom the result is always the sole driver. So, those organisations will do everything (as close fo the legal limit) they can that is in their gift to give their team the best chance.
Remember the pools of water on the riverside pitch as it was inundated before games against teams we knew had much stronger footballing capability? When it helps us, great. When it hinders us, it is an unfair practice.
It is the same in cricket, where the wicket is cultivated and set up to match the home team's strength. It is accepted (and expected) practice.
As my Dad always used to tell me, a bad workman always blames his tools. So, you are either good enough as a collection of professional footballers to deal with whatever conditions you have to face, or not.
Cream, as they say, will always rise to the top. It doesn't stop me being a lifelong Boro fan when I can acknowledge that this collection of players, while it has its moments has as many, if not more, limitations.
Do I want the result more than the performance?
That is a really hard question to answer honestly.
I think the older I get, I too prefer to see a team that, overall tries to play football to the best of its capabilities, even though that means we will lose out at times; rather than one that plays consistently to win with a wholly negative and uninspiring effort.
The reality is that we have seen time and time again, it is the teams who play the best football overall a season, the best teams that is, that will be the most successful.
The most successful Boro teams of my years have not been the ones that tried to grind out every result with negative football.
So come on Boro, yes, get us the results we need, but get them in a manner that befits the traditions of a famous old club and that continues to excite us all.
Whenever a club is struggling, the root cause is invariably recruitment. Which leads inevitably to financial trouble, which in turn leads to any player with a future, leaving as quickly as is humanly possible, which means that no decent player will join the club, but plenty of players who should be avoided like the plague will rush to join. I should add that the level of manager drops noticeably for obvious reasons. All this is a description of a club circling the drain as it slips down a few leagues. There is a reason why we had avoided the third division, and that is our (very expensive and luxurious) training complex. One must assume that even the players we are at the present employing, grasp that they must collect enough points to avoid the third division at a minimum! We are now, i believe, buying cheap, efficient, journeymen, but any attempt to spot the Good Young player down in the lower levels of football is not happening, and they do exist.
Club website confirming NW has agreed to stay on for the 21/22 season along with KB and RJ. 😎
Club website confirming NW has agreed to stay on for the 21/22 season along with KB and RJ. 😎
I think this is good news
Club website confirming NW has agreed to stay on for the 21/22 season along with KB and RJ. 😎
I think this is good news
I agree
Ref your post but, sorry I don’t agree as we have spotted young players like Brown, Dijksteel, Bola, Fisher, Folarin and Wing to name but a few signed from the lower leagues and all show promise.
Add to that the exciting crop of home grown youngsters from the Academy, Tavernier, Fry, Haydn Hackney, Isaac Fletcher. Also DJed Spence signed from Fulham Academy.
What we cannot do now is go out and spend 15m on unproven players !
OFB
So I have to wait yet another season before I can see Mogga to return to Boro 😋 ... UTB!
Quote from NW on staying for another year .....
(Warnock says he hadn't told the players he was staying on before the club announced it on Thursday morning.
"I thought if I tell Tavernier on Tuesday he'll tell every Tom, Dick and Harry and it will be all over Twitter or whatever these lads use these days," he says)
Marcus seems to be a fun guy and I have noticed he always talking on the pitch to anybody including the opposition players and the officials 🤣
@malcolm Also urging other players on, too. A future captain like his brother at Rangers? Up the Boro!
Ref your post but, sorry I don’t agree as we have spotted young players like Brown, Dijksteel, Bola, Fisher, Folarin and Wing to name but a few signed from the lower leagues and all show promise.
Add to that the exciting crop of home grown youngsters from the Academy, Tavernier, Fry, Haydn Hackney, Isaac Fletcher. Also DJed Spence signed from Fulham Academy.
What we cannot do now is go out and spend 15m on unproven players !
OFB
.....and Walker, Brynn, O’Neill, Wood-Gordon, Burrell and others There’s a whole team of young talent coming through. We just need two or three senior players.