Four points and two goals a difference as we stand, what a roller coaster.
Akpom penalty 3 - 1 Boro
OFB. Just wanted to say I love your forecasting! 😉😊😎
Penalty by Ramsey in the 77th minute makes it 3!
Whoops! Bet365 got that wrong & Chuba got in on the act, as David reported.
Make that four points and one goal a difference, I know that Lazarus came back from the dead but did he wear a Boro shirt when he did?
P.S. I am still a little anxious about the game today which could certainly derail some of my optimism,. Therefore I am still only whispering my prediction very cautiously that we will triumph by the odd goal in three.
Takes deep breath and holds...
CoB
...and gently exhales 🙂
Boro win 3 - 1 again. First half I needed a glass of Rioja. 2nd half a celebratory glass of Rioja. Even with Karanka as manager we didn't have a team like this. If only Carrick had taken over earlier in the season.
"If's" David, "If's".
Here, hang on a second, there's only 17 points and 20 goals a difference between us and Burnley, mmm, nah, put that bottle of red away and go to bed and dream a real dream.
Vic's verdict at full time:
FT: 3-1. Excellent. Boro dominated throughout. Passed & probed & stayed patient & calm after falling behind to a freak opener. Stuck to the shape, found their shooting boots & deservedly won. Closed that gap again. All to play for now
And a Squawka stat he retweeted:
Chuba Akpom has scored more league goals in 2023 than any other player in England's top four tiers (10).
stircrazy, as I pointed out earlier that having to come back from and early goal, freakish or not is what hurts, there has to be an inquest as to why we constantly allow any team we play against to punish us early doors. Middlesbrough3 has a limited lifespan, let's not rely on that to get us to the top of the tree.
@peasepudinperth Tell me ppp how do you defend a deflection off a defenders hip/bum that drops at the feet of their striker two yards out 🤔, why look for negatives on a very good first half, followed by an excellent second half, ask Liverpool fans today 😂😂😂
Come on BORO.
Never in doubt 🙂 phew
Whenever I see a comment from you I think back to the 9 times I visited Perth, staying with my late uncle/cousins. Having free accommodation meant I could afford to travel around Australia and visit each state and NT and go to NZ 3 times. I can't say that I have "seen" Australia though as it is such a large area. The last time I went to Australia was in 2010 when I also spent a few days in Tasmania. I didn't like the long flights especially on my own so I then decided I couldn't face it again. and after some European holidays I went to Reykjavik in 2016 for my last foreign holiday.
Exmil, I totally agree that a ball skidding off some blokes backside and inadvertently finishing at another blokes feet to score is something you can't account for, unless you stop the original strike in the first place. We have a disgraceful record this season of allowing our opponents to go a goal to the good and giving us a hill to climb, how come we've never, or very rarely, been in the same situation to give them the hill to climb instead?
If you never look for negatives you can never take the negatives you do have and turn them in to positives, and we have negatives that we need to address to make us nigh on perfect. Sitting on the laurels of Middlesbrough3 is a perfect example of a negative, as I stated earlier that title has a limited lifespan.
Chuba Akpom has played 29 games this season and scored 22 goals - in the league. What a record.
And Carrick has won 46 points from 20 matches - exactly 2.300 points per a game. Up the Boro!
@peasepudinperth I know what you’re saying but let’s enjoy the moment. I can’t see Middlesbrough3 as anything other than a positive.
Never mind New York... Middlesbrough. A team so good they named it thrice...
Out of interest, I went to look at the 538 prediction table after today. It's now showing Sheffield United with a 59% chance of finishing second. Still favourites but their recent form is in the pits and there's signs of things falling apart. There are still many twists and turns to go and you have to figure that they'll put a good run of results together at some point but it's great for once to be the form team that everyone else fears, scoring goals from all parts of the team and playing beautiful football. This kind of thing usually happens once every decade or so when you're a Boro fan, so I am enjoying the ride.
Must admit I think the game on Tuesday night v Stoke will be one of most.banana skinny, they look like they are flying. Also renewed my season tickets yesterday
Chuba Akpom has played 29 games this season and scored 22 goals - in the league. What a record!
Yessss! I saw a Tweet today that said he has scored more goals in 2023 than any other player in the four divisions. And, apparently, only Haaland in the 4 leagues has scored more this season than Chuba’s 22.
We’ve scored 22 goals in our last 8 games and have a goal difference of +23. And as Jarkko said, Carrick has won 46 points from a possible 60. This is simply incredible. I’m still having to pinch myself that this is our Boro. Never known anything like it, but I sure mean to enjoy it to the full while it lasts.
Meanwhile, Playmates, the first part of my imagined, unlikely scenario has come true! One more loss for Sheffield United - for once I’ll be cheering on the Mackems! - and 2 more Boro wins next week 🤞🤞🤞🤞will see us leapfrog the Blades into second place. They must be getting a bit edgy in Sheffield. All to play for. Come on Boro, we can do this!
Great come back from a goal down to three points. However I am with PPinP, in that the defensive five still continue to give me palpitations.
Whilst I think all teams tend to have a blip and this may be Sheffields, we may have one to come. Hopefully not.
However the defence has issues and WBA showed that truth. Can we continue to score more goals than the opposition. Cutting out basic mistake may help.
David, Selwyn and I rambled on not so long back in regards to just how big Australia is, in fact I can fly north from Perth for three hours and still be in the same state of West Australia never mind the whole of the place. We've been back here since 1999 and we haven't even scratched the surface of seeing what's out there, there's so much to see and do. A lot of it can be repetitive as in one outback town looking virtually the same as the next one, and the bits in between can look as though you're going round in circles, apart from a road in north WA that is 120km in a straight line without a single curve or bend on it. If like you long haul flights are to be avoided, then you live in the wrong place if you reside in Perth.
Martin, to say I'm not enjoying the moment would be the biggest understatement ever as my feet haven't touched the floor in months, but I'd like for us to be three to the good before a jammy one bounces off a backside in to our net, and as I've said previously, I'd sooner that it never happened at all. I've had palpitations all of my life, so unlike Pedro I don't need us conceding yet another early goal to kick them off, but when we do it certainly doesn't help either.
When I say that Middlesbrough3 is a negative, I'm harping back to when the Skunks were flying high under Keegan, their motto was you score three and we'll score four, until the days they couldn't. I'm certain we all remember the classic 4-3 game at Anfield (in 97 I think), only it was Liverpool that got the four and not the Skunks, and the day Keegan lost it in front of the camera as Fergie got under his skin while the wheels were coming off the Skunk express. West Brom proved that our guns can be spiked whilst holding on to an early two goal lead, we very nearly went two behind yesterday and who's to say that the same wouldn't have happened if we had. I simply wish that we could kick off ten minutes earlier than our opposition, so by the time they take to the pitch we've got our silly mistakes out of the way, seeing as we can't then fix them.
I think that the point to be made about our present position is the obvious one, we have a great coach and a great Manager. Coming back from a losing position in not easy in any league, so it is astonishing that our team finds it easy (well, possible)on a regular basis. Far from being impossible, second place is very much on, because Sheffield United are in a shocking situation at this moment, the world at their feet, and everything falling apart, the original nightmare.
Not having read much on the BBC football website lately I was unaware that Gary Lineker had been dismissed though maybe only temporarily from chairing Match of the Day, nor that his colleagues had pulled out of introducing Football Focus and Final Score yesterday. Was this another case of the BBC shooting itself in both feet and deciding what sports commentators should report on outside their field of expertise, or merely kowtowing to government guidelines?
It is many years since I watched Question Time, but now we have non political panel members such as entertainers, comedians and even singers giving their opinions on what is generally outside their comfort zone, and welcomed for their opinions on various issues outside their normal field of expertise, and why not?So why castigate Gary Lineker in the first place because of government pressure? It is not surprising then that Lineker’s colleagues should should show some solidarity by refusing to replace him.
In a separate issue the BBC decided to withdraw the free concession for the over 75s a couple of years back, and now the aged have been lumbered with a £159 annual subscription charge just for watching any of their favourite programmes and soaps either on any of the multitude of .channels available to them. I can afford the fee, but for many old people it is an imposition inflicted on those who can ill afford the licence fee.
But there are some advantages especially on MOTD. Last night’s programme was like a breath of fresh air. It was a throwback to attending a football match without someone analysing every move on the field of play. Who needs analysts any way? When I used to attend football matches I didn’t have someone like Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, Gary Lineker spouting most of which was drivel anyway; I could watch a match and make up my own mind what I had witnessed anyway. VAR decisions were not analysed on MOTD last night, a decision made instantly and resulted in a more pleasurable environment all round. I didn’t receive unwanted comments from friends or neighbours sitting next to me, and the whole experience was what would expect from a visit to a football match anyway. The whole programme was almost cut in half, but with plenty of crowd atmosphere to satisfy everyone.
It got me thinking why do we need commentators anyway or presenters come to that. Now if only Sky Rugby League commentators could be abolished also! The ramblings of the likes of Bill Arthur, Terry O’Connor and Barrie McDermott are at best unintelligible and at worst anathema to most viewers. We’re not children and can make up our own minds of what we have seen before us.
Now on to another subject, Diasboro. OFB and Andy R are doing a marvellous job in preluding Boro’s fixtures and have replaced Werdermouth very successfully, but the current Gazette reporters are lacking in their presentation of match reports. How I miss Redcar Red’s match reports. I understand that he and Werdermouth are maybe self employed and need to re-establish contacts maybe lost through Covid 19. Both these gentlemen were the stalwarts of this forum and work must take precedence. Indeed Redcar Red has never been replaced and was a reporter in the true tradition of the late Cliff Mitchell. In fact it was sometimes impossible to distinguish who was the professional reporter and who was the unpaid one.
It’s not only the production of an article that we all appreciate, but the research that goes in to producing the finished article which I’m sure both OFB and Andy R will agree about. There are currently 58 members on Diasbora, yet 20 of those only write less than single blogs. This is not meant to be a criticism of them, as most of them are probably in employment and have busy lives to live. But exMil must be disappointed that only 11 have entered his exMil challenge this year when over 40 participated last year. I imagine it must take up a lot of his time to set up his annual challenge considering how well Boro are playing at the moment.
I myself are merely an historian and statistician and much of which I have read several times, plus spending much of my time enraptured by what my grandfather told me about the Boro he knew, as well as his recollections of Boro Bears Speedway team in the past. But I have had to cut back on perusing league tables of the 7 major European football countries, and the English football pyramid system down to Steps 5 and 6 because of my ongoing health problems. I realise that very few Diasborians share my passion for the history of our great football club going back to the pre-Northern League years of 1862 and Boro’s admission to the Football League thanks to the support of both Sunderland and Newcastle United in 1899. I actually sometimes feel that I was alive in those halcyon days of yore, so many times that I have read about them.
As I say my last meeting with my Prostate Cancer consultant was slightly disappointing as there are no more drugs available which will enhance my longevity, and am now back in the hands of my GPs to try to establish how much longer I’m able to survive. Will I still be alive to see Boro back in the Premier League? Or indeed see the Ashes cricket test matches this year? Nevertheless I’ve done well to survive into my 86th year. We all have to die sometime, so although not suicidal like most people of my age would prefer to die in my sleep. Although it would be unfortunate to miss out on Boro’s promotion or indeed the Ashes cricket series this summer.
Is this the year when I finally snuff it, or perhaps God doesn’t yet want me for a sunbeam just yet!
Thanks for the kind words, Ken. Appreciated.
It’s certainly true that the number of contributors to this blog is declining and that we’ve lost some excellent posters along the way. I think the conversation has also changed as well as the comments about todays Boro are fewer and fewer with the discussion often about other subjects. That’s fine of course and reflects the remaining readership but I wonder if it discourages new membership if the general discussion isn’t as much “on point”.
I’m not sure what the answer is. Perhaps longer form discussion such as this just isn’t what the masses want, with people more inclined to use Twitter etc in shorter bursts.
I’ve just watched the highlights and it looks like it was quite an open game. Once again, I wasn’t impressed with CA’s penalty technique, although to be fair he scored (which is the least we should expect).
I’m still pinching myself about the team we’ve become, compared to the first part of the season. The change is nothing less than astounding.
@andy-r I’m not sure membership growth is helped by the lack of promotion of Diasboro. I recall that Werder wasn’t keen for us to share links on social media but I can’t remember his reasons. I think we’ve become a small group of regular contributors (mainly of a certain age) and it may be hard for newcomers to fit in.