* The Unofficial "Official" Boro v Birmingham City [03/24] Match-Day Thread *

Normanby_Red said:
I think it's also worth noting that he's named an unchanged team twice now and look where it's gotten us. Not tinkering with the team as he usually does has been such a positive. I'd play the exact same team on saturday against blackburn. International break up next so let's not change a winning team and hopefully we go into it with 4 wins on the bounce
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It’s the three at the back. We beat Leicester with it. We beat Chelsea with it. We’ve won the last 3 games with it.

I fear he’ll go back to the four but I pray he doesn’t.
 
GingerTravel said:
We've got some tough games coming up, but we tend to excel in those. Bigger issue is there are three sides ahead of us and I don't think we'll pick up 6 points more than all of those sides
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No we definitely aren’t making the playoffs - we have dropped far too many points to make up that much ground in the remaining games
 
BoroMart said:
Not the best technical performance but excellent tactically and physically. Back to back away cleansheets is never to be sniffed at. Did Dieng have a save to make?

Dieng 6 - flapped at a cross didn’t have much else to do
McNair 7 - sokid
Rav 8 - star man
Clarke 7 - was hot and cold but was resiliant
Ayling 7.5 - really good for 70 blowing the last 10
Engel 6 - passing was poor but worked really hard
Howson 6 worked hard
O’Brien 7 showed a bit more quality than howson but worked as hard
Forss 5 - game passed him by
McGree 7 - great goal in a hot and cold performance
Latte lath 7 - worked hard was a menace, tired

Greenwood 6 - worked hard, rubbish free kick
Azaz 5 - didn’t really get into the game
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I think Clarke has to be given separate marks for his head and feet. 7.5 and 3 for me.
 
Really don’t get all the criticism after another away win. We were all a little nervous a few weeks ago and looking down the table rather than up. We are grinding out results and picking up points that we should be celebrating - 5 points off the play offs - could easily be only 2 on Saturday. Let’s just find the positives tonight and leave telling the world who is crap and not good enough for the next defeat - hopefully there won’t be one 👍
 
Laughing said:
Thats an interesting take, I thought Howson was poor tonight and made a couple of pretty big bloopers in the first half. In the second our midfield couldn't control the ball so we couldn't control the game against a pretty poor side. I thought Howson was the reason for our lack of control.

VDB wasn't as good as Clarke or McNair though all 3 had very good games.

According to FOTB which is solely stats based, Clarke got man of the match with 8.0 and Engel next best at 7.9. Not sure how accurate those ratings are as Forss was the lowest marked player at 6.1.
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Howson wasn’t great either but he didn’t seem to play us into trouble anywhere near as much as O’Brien did. At least Howson knew when to get rid of it and put it into the channel.

Not sure how Engel was rated second highest either, another who kept playing into trouble and giving their players the chance to nip in and steal the ball.
 
VDB and Clarke were good. A flash of brilliance from McGree. But not a good game by any means.
 
Tryasize10 said:
He was awful, unusually against us!
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He wasn't alone. Ruddy was the worst goalkeeper when kicking the ball I have seen in this division probably ever. I don't think a single clearance or kick from his hands went to a blue shirt. The CBs were like they had wandered on from a recreation of the slapstick routine. A couple of them (Laird and Stansfield?) could run quite quickly. Jukavic (sp?) was anonymous... I could go on. They were terrible. Without seeing the stats I doubt if they had a single attempt on target?
 
Mysonpat. said:
I get the impression with him, he is in the shop window and he tries to do the special pass or run when we just need to him to keep possession.
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He’s just a player who can do the odd good thing and occasionally produce a bit of magic. He’s nowhere near consistent enough.

The bit of play that summed him up tonight was a ball that got played to him in the centre circle. LL makes a run through the middle which was begging for a through ball and he doesn’t see it. Turns, plays a ball across field that’s behind Ayling who who was bombing forward.

He manages to get the ball back 10-15 seconds later but again, puts it behind the man when he passes it.

I hope Leeds go up (Bork) to end any chances of us considering him as a permanent next season. He surely must know he’s going to have to take a pay cut to play football mind. You won’t find any sides splashing PL money on him and don’t see Leeds using him.

He runs around a lot though. Somebody near me said he was MOM a few months ago as he “tried hard” 🙈🤣
 
Merlin said:
No no no ! I’m sorry but the playoffs are long gone - and that’s the end of it !
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They're clearly not.
We just have limited room for error.

Coventry are in the FA Cup this weekend, and their game that has been postponed is against Hull (the teams in 7th and 8th)

If Norwich drop points and we win, we're 2-3 points off the play-offs with 8 games to go.
That's not long gone.
 
TheYorkshireTerrier said:
Howson wasn’t great either but he didn’t seem to play us into trouble anywhere near as much as O’Brien did. At least Howson knew when to get rid of it and put it into the channel.

Not sure how Engel was rated second highest either, another who kept playing into trouble and giving their players the chance to nip in and steal the ball.
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Thought Engel was good for 60-70 minutes. Lost the ball a few times late on when it wasn't necessary, I wouldn't have had him second best either. CB's 1, 2 and 3 in any order, for me.
 
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