Vs Middlesbrough (H) Match Thread

[kevinhectoring]

1 hour ago, Jourdan said:

Warne gets his tactics right, we improve defensively, and we beat a team who finished 8th last season and will be competing for a top 6 place at worst and maybe even top 2.

And lo and behold, it was ‘lucky’ and ‘nothing to do with Warne’, and they are still not happy.

We would have been lucky just to draw ! 

Some are saying: we looked outgunned, we’ll struggle. You’re saying: we won so Warne won the tactical battle. 
 

The reality is: it’s a 3 point ram raid and those points could prove vital in a battle for top 6 or a relegation dogfight. We’re still recruiting, still trying to find the best way to use our new talent and until we see how all that unfolds we have no idea which end of the division Warne will take us to. We just need to wait and see

[Crewton]

58 minutes ago, Foreveram said:

Stop it now, it’s past your bedtime ☺️

Aye, that's right it is. Now go to bed Chris and try not to pish in the wardrobe....

[McArthur Park]

17 minutes ago, DCFC Kicks said:

Yep, because every good manager just waits for something bad to happen before changing things.

Did I say that was the only time he might change things?

[De22Ram]

5 hours ago, Chris_Martin said:

and then it will just be same again next season...

we need to think more long term.

 

Well not really lol, because each transfer window we can add more quality and build a championship team to compete! This season stay up! The team gets expierence, the younger lads develop and after a few seasons you have a solid championship team aiming for promotion! 

[DRBee]

1 hour ago, Chris_Martin said:

of course not. just that we're not going to get any further than being a low end championship club playing this way. wheres the long term vision?

But you are judging long term vision on one match with specific circumstances. Nobody knows yet where Warne's vision will take us but he doesn't deserve the judgement your are making at this point. 

[Jourdan]

4 minutes ago, kevinhectoring said:

We would have been lucky just to draw ! 

Some are saying: we looked outgunned, we’ll struggle. You’re saying: we won so Warne won the tactical battle. 

The reality is: it’s a 3 point ram raid and those points could prove vital in a battle for top 6 or a relegation dogfight. We’re still recruiting, still trying to find the best way to use our new talent and until we see how all that unfolds we have no idea which end of the division Warne will take us to. We just need to wait and see

I am not saying Warne is a tactical genius or ran rings around Carrick. Far from it.

The point is that some people won’t even give Warne any credit even when things go well.

They want to discredit him or suggest things go well in spite of him. To me, he should get a fair share of praise and criticism.

Getting three points versus a previously unbeaten Boro who had scored 3 v Leeds only a few days prior is praiseworthy surely, even if it did require some tactical adjustments?

[Red_ram]

So to summarise page after page of bickering:

Had to defend really well to grind out a vital win against good opposition, that had more attacking intent than us.

Cant do that every week though else we’ll struggle to stay in this league. 

Close thread.

(Lost in all the noise, but I was really pleased to hear Warne say he was wanting to put Daj on, but had to reshuffle his subs. Wasn’t sure he’d be in his mind to play at all, and I’d like to see him at least get solid cameos to stake his claim).

[Jourdan]

30 minutes ago, DCFC Kicks said:

was it not lucky?

If we had lost 1-0 with 70% possession and 20 shots on goal, would you call it unlucky?

[kevinhectoring]

16 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

If we had lost 1-0 with 70% possession and 20 shots on goal, would you call it unlucky?

Middlesborough were unlucky. We were lucky. Karma, Mr Gibson

dont really know what your point is though 

[brady1993]

50 minutes ago, Jourdan said:

Stage one of the long term plan was to get out of League 1. Warne has achieved that.

Stage two is to stabilise ourselves in the Championship. With results like yesterday’s, Warne has a good chance of achieving that too.

At the end of the day, I am not sure what you are expecting. We saw v Blackburn what happens if you are too open, too disorganised and make mistakes defensively. Surely you are happy that we showed we can learn, adapt and get it right even if we had to ride our luck at times?

We need to set a platform for the season, so of course we are going to be studying teams and seeing how we can stop them and adapting to that. Or would you rather us go 10 games without a win by staying true to one particular style or tactic and not adapting?

Boro are an established Championship side with one of the biggest budgets in the division. They are years ahead of us in their journey. They have put together a strong, well balanced side that plays good football but it has also cost millions to assemble.

That could be us, but at the moment, we need to be patient as you can’t build that in one summer or with free transfers and £750k signings.

I think that's one way to look at it but I do think in part it's an outlook that's flawed or at least incomplete. Before I go on with what I'm about to say don't take it as a criticism of yesterday per se, I've not seen the game yet and so don't really want to comment on it aside it from being reassuring that we can at the very least grind out a result if we need to at this level (which I had some concerns about following Blackburn).

When it comes to a long term plan though I am of the mentality that you really need to think further than just the next step. If you think too much in terms of those atomised goals it builds a kind of debt that makes future success or taking further steps progressively harder. A good example I think you can point to in this rather than focusing on developing academy players, looking to bring young talent and building an ethos at a level that's theoretically less competitive, Warne placed emphasis on loans and very established players in the hope it would get us out of league 1 as fast as possible. What that meant was when we hit this summer we needed another major overhaul in order to hope to stay in the league, rather than it being a smoother transition. 

In fuelling that league 1 promotion we lost a lot of our younger talent for not a lot of compensation and didn't really replace it or attempt to develop other academy players into similar squad roles. What this means is the overall level the squad can reach is lower. The uncomfortable reality is that the squad now is very likely in a worse spot in many aspects than what Warne took-over. You can make the argument that losing the likes of Bird or Knight were unavoidable but still we cashed that in and didn't really look at how we'd address that aspect because all of the focus is on the immediate next step. 

It's a story that's repeating in small already this season, with so far an apparent lack of working on a clear way of playing/effective coaching in order to maximise what we available and with how we've dealt with a lack of striker. We've been clearly after a striker all pre-season, we bring in a player in Yates on loan who is decent but is likely a bottom half championship player and can't play the first three games and yet we have Brown who seems to be improving rapidly but we don't use the opportunity we have to really test and develop him when it presents itself. Brown could have started every pre-season game and all three of these opening games and in the long run we'd have likely been better off for it.

[DE56Ram]

6 hours ago, brady1993 said:

I think that's one way to look at it but I do think in part it's an outlook that's flawed or at least incomplete. Before I go on with what I'm about to say don't take it as a criticism of yesterday per se, I've not seen the game yet and so don't really want to comment on it aside it from being reassuring that we can at the very least grind out a result if we need to at this level (which I had some concerns about following Blackburn).

When it comes to a long term plan though I am of the mentality that you really need to think further than just the next step. If you think too much in terms of those atomised goals it builds a kind of debt that makes future success or taking further steps progressively harder. A good example I think you can point to in this rather than focusing on developing academy players, looking to bring young talent and building an ethos at a level that's theoretically less competitive, Warne placed emphasis on loans and very established players in the hope it would get us out of league 1 as fast as possible. What that meant was when we hit this summer we needed another major overhaul in order to hope to stay in the league, rather than it being a smoother transition. 

In fuelling that league 1 promotion we lost a lot of our younger talent for not a lot of compensation and didn't really replace it or attempt to develop other academy players into similar squad roles. What this means is the overall level the squad can reach is lower. The uncomfortable reality is that the squad now is very likely in a worse spot in many aspects than what Warne took-over. You can make the argument that losing the likes of Bird or Knight were unavoidable but still we cashed that in and didn't really look at how we'd address that aspect because all of the focus is on the immediate next step. 

It's a story that's repeating in small already this season, with so far an apparent lack of working on a clear way of playing/effective coaching in order to maximise what we available and with how we've dealt with a lack of striker. We've been clearly after a striker all pre-season, we bring in a player in Yates on loan who is decent but is likely a bottom half championship player and can't play the first three games and yet we have Brown who seems to be improving rapidly but we don't use the opportunity we have to really test and develop him when it presents itself. Brown could have started every pre-season game and all three of these opening games and in the long run we'd have likely been better off for it.

I haven’t watched the match yet, but am prepared to spend the next 20 minutes of my life commenting on this football club. . . Blah, blah, blah 😕 

[Kathcairns]

7 hours ago, DCFC Kicks said:

was it not lucky?

I think in every football game there is a bit of luck involved, not just ours.

[jono]

7 hours ago, DCFC Kicks said:

was it not lucky?

Probably, but there will be games when we are unlucky. Lucky in so far as we pounced on a mistake during a game that we tactically won. It also shows as many said last season, that we can’t be as casual in the championship because if you make a mistake you’ll get caught and punished ….. Ask Middlesbrough 

[Archied]

So another match day thread where we got a fantastic 3 points against a team that’s been building at this level we’ve got ourselves back into , with far more money spent , bigger better squad, which we won by sheer grit , determination, organisation, team spirit in the face of losing two of our defenders early on but clinically punished they’re mistake descends into ,, we were just lucky , we cannot survive playing like that , Warne is not good enough ect ect ,

im glad I go to games and watch real football, I can assure you I enjoyed ,was riveted to the game and as happy at the final whistle as any game we have dominated and strolled through ( perhaps more so )

one game at a time and I’m happy for warne to do what he thinks is needed to get the points to stay up and establish us again , im not gonna get bogged down by those telling us how poor and lucky we were and how bad it’s going to be going forward , engage a little and laugh them off🤷🏻‍♂️

[InstaRam]

I think we should be humble before the challenge of staying up. Unlike last year when I expected us to win big every now and then, now every point is something to celebrate. We don't have as good a squad as most other teams and we will have to fight to average 1 point per game and stay up.

This win was wonderful and now it's just a matter of reloading for the next attempt. It will probably take us several years before we can challenge for top 6 again. This is going to be a long and hard season, but if we can finish in 19-20 in the end, I will be overjoyed. It will require more efforts like this for sure.

[Tamworthram]

7 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

Middlesborough were unlucky. We were lucky. Karma, Mr Gibson

dont really know what your point is though 

I’m not sure how “unlucky” Middlesbrough were. Having all that possession, a lot of it in attacking positions, but frequently shooting wide isn’t bad luck, it’s poor finishing. When shots were on target, failing to beat a keeper (some claim is no more than a good league two keeper) isn’t bad luck. Even the one that hit the post only got past Vickers because Bradley got a touch on it (if I’m remembering correctly).

As @Kathcairns says, there is an element of luck in most/every game. Boro were clearly the better side and should really have taken at least a point but the reason they didn’t was primarily down to good solid defending and poor finishing, not bad luck.

[Simmoram2024Ramsrontheup]

8 hours ago, kevinhectoring said:

We would have been lucky just to draw ! 

Some are saying: we looked outgunned, we’ll struggle. You’re saying: we won so Warne won the tactical battle. 
 

The reality is: it’s a 3 point ram raid and those points could prove vital in a battle for top 6 or a relegation dogfight. We’re still recruiting, still trying to find the best way to use our new talent and until we see how all that unfolds we have no idea which end of the division Warne will take us to. We just need to wait and see

I actually like being the underdogs this year, it will certainly help us. I’ve predicted to lose every game, so I’m not disappointed. Saturday was such a determined performance.

[VulcanRam]

14 hours ago, Chris_Martin said:

would you still say that if their shot had gone in off the post rather than back out?

or if their pass had made it to the gk ?

But it didn't so your point is irrelevant. 

[RoyMac5]

8 hours ago, Jourdan said:

...

Getting three points versus a previously unbeaten Boro who had scored 3 v Leeds only a few days prior is praiseworthy surely, even if it did require some tactical adjustments?

What tactical adjustment? You mean when Cashin and Wilson had to go off? Why didn't he start like that? The sort of tactical adjustment that Lampard had to do when he bought Marriot on against L**ds because of injury? He got lucky and then made the correct call? Or he got lucky? They should have put a few past us but didn't put the target man on up front until the last few minutes, Carrick got that wrong.

[MadAmster]

20 hours ago, Foreveram said:

Even with the 5 minutes of added time up and no further stoppages, he still proceeded to play a further 71 seconds and gave them one last free kick to put the ball into the area 🤷🏻‍♂️

Typical of both Madley brothers. I don't recall either of them having a good game when reffing us. 

Think back to last season. PW passed comment and the "socials" were full of "how can Madley ref us v Barnsley when he spent years at their Academy"? He got replaced. It's more than feasible that he's not forgotten that.