Middlesbrough recruit Head of Scouting from Crystal Palace.

Suppose it just goes to show for how many years we attracted players here as we paid extremely good wages. That's it. They didn't come for the love of The Bongo or Parmos.

Now its clear as day that our recruitment model has changed massively due to FFP and we have to be extremely smart with the whole deal. If we continued to throw big money at bang average players, we would soon be the new Derby, Sheff Weds, Leeds, Sunderland etc.

It's going to take time to set up, implement etc.....which as we are all aware time in football is a luxury very rarely afforded. Hopefully see a return sooner rather than later.

Need to see how it goes over the next 2-3 transfer windows.
 
We also attracted players because we had a world class training facility when everyone else was still playing catch up. Ours is nothing special anymore, every club has one so that advantage has gone.
 
BoroMart said:
It wasn't a shocking season, we had a shocking 2 months Dec and Jan, but we had been been very good before that. We really do have fans who like to paint everything as awful all the time even when it wasn't.

Drew with Liverpool, won 3-0 away to Birmingham (the viduka game), beat Arsenal at home, villa away, Fulham and Palace at home, and of course absolutely battered a brilliant Man Utd side 4-1, Rio told me he hated playing at the Riverside that was one of the toughest games of his life. We were on 23 points after 15 games. 5 UEFA cup games unbeaten with 5 cleansheets, and had beaten two good sides in the league cup.

It fell apart in Dec/Jan we had a terrible run, but we also had a massive injury crisis - Boateng, Ehiogu, Southgate, Schwarzer, Viduka, Haaselbaink all had injuries over that period.....6 of the best players we've ever had. Fans got frustrated, because we should have put up a better showing in those months, but it was a real and painful injury crisis.
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Think you're merging 04/05 and 05/06 into one season here, Mart.

The season ticket throwing was in 06 and it was followed by the smashing in of Chelsea 3 nowt.

Brum and United games were definitely 04/05 which is when Boateng and Viduka got injured and we had a mid season drop. We were **** hot before that.
 
Nano said:
Nah, we had odd games where we were good but in general we had been way below expectations. Remember, this was the season after our best ever league position so expectations were very high. Beating good teams and losing to terrible ones was more frustrating than of we had just beaten the fodder and lost to the big teams.
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We had plenty of decent games in the first half of the season, I've just listed some.

Nano said:
By the time we played Villa in February we had only won 6 games in 24 league games, 1 in the last 10 including a 7-0 against Arsenal.
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Exactly, villas was the end of a bad run. We had a record of just 5 defeats in the first 14 games, away to spurs west ham and everton were expected, home to sunderland and charlton weren't. But thats balanced against not expecting to beat Man Utd and Arsenal at home and win away to villa. We also won away to grasshoppers and Everton in cups. There were far more positives than negatives in that first 3 months. The wheels fell off for 2 months though, we won 1 drew 3 and lost 6 and got ko'd from the league cup in Dec/Jan.

We got key players fit in Feb and results picked p massive. Southgate, Schwarzer and Boateng were back first game after villa and we beat Chelsea. We rarely defended well when Boateng was injured in that era.
 
Big_Nothing said:
Think you're merging 04/05 and 05/06 into one season here, Mart.

The season ticket throwing was in 06 and it was followed by the smashing in of Chelsea 3 nowt.

Brum and United games were definitely 04/05 which is when Boateng and Viduka got injured and we had a mid season drop. We were **** hot before that.
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Aug 05 was the viduka game, Man Utd was 29th Oct 05...both 05/06 season

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BoroMart said:
We had plenty of decent games in the first half of the season, I've just listed some.


Exactly, villas was the end of a bad run. We had a record of just 5 defeats in the first 14 games, away to spurs west ham and everton were expected, home to sunderland and charlton weren't. But thats balanced against not expecting to beat Man Utd and Arsenal at home and win away to villa. We also won away to grasshoppers and Everton in cups. There were far more positives than negatives in that first 3 months. The wheels fell off for 2 months though, we won 1 drew 3 and lost 6 and got ko'd from the league cup in Dec/Jan.

We got key players fit in Feb and results picked p massive. Southgate, Schwarzer and Boateng were back first game after villa and we beat Chelsea. We rarely defended well when Boateng was injured in that era.
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We were 4th bottom after that game. We had our highest ever finish the season before. Expectations were high. Nobody thought that was acceptable. It was a shocking season up until they point, despite the occasional good result. Not sure why anyone would argue that we were having a good season.

Fortunes changed massively after the session ticket throwing incident.
 

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and at end of Nov we were 10th, just 4 points behind our record prem finish, so that was an acceptable state to be in. As you pointed out we then slid from 10th to 17th and fell around 15 points behind our record position. You proved my point, we were doing fine, then fell off a cliff. We then recovered in March with a great run of form. The biggest factor over that two month period was injuries not the manager.

We finished the season 14th, and still 15 points behind 7th place. So we had 7th place form over the final 3 months. Shame we fell off in the deep darkness of winter

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BoroMart said:
and at end of Nov we were 10th, just 4 points behind our record prem finish, so that was an acceptable state to be in. As you pointed out we then slid from 10th to 17th and fell around 15 points behind our record position. You proved my point, we were doing fine, then fell off a cliff. We then recovered in March with a great run of form. The biggest factor over that two month period was injuries not the manager.

We finished the season 14th, and still 15 points behind 7th place. So we had 7th place form over the final 3 months. Shame we fell off in the deep darkness of winter

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Wow. 4th bottom for a team hoping to be challenging for the champions league, not the championship is not acceptable. It was poor, even with the injuries.

At the point of the season ticket throwing the season to date could definitely be described as shocking. I don't care whether it was players or manager. You are arguing against the statement that it had been a shocking season to that point. It definitively was.

After they was great but nobody was happy about a solitary win in 2 months, against the worst team the PL had ever seen. Being battered 4-0 at home against a poor Villa team was a disgrace. I don't think we would have been surprised if McLaren had been sacked if we hadn't beaten Chelsea the week after.
 
Nano said:
Wow. 4th bottom for a team hoping to be challenging for the champions league, not the championship is not acceptable. It was poor, even with the injuries.
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it was a shocking 2 months, probably the worst 2 month period in my memory, even with injuries, yes. As you confirmed "After they was great but nobody was happy about a solitary win in 2 months", I absolutely agree with that.
 
Nano said:
At the point of the season ticket throwing the season to date could definitely be described as shocking. I don't care whether it was players or manager. You are arguing against the statement that it had been a shocking season to that point. It definitively was.
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it was a shocking two months, not the whole season
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
We weren’t sixth when he was appointed.

This thread sums some Boro fans up IMO. Complain about recruitment not being good enough. Club appoint new scout. Same people moan that it’s too late. I mean, FFS.

As I said elsewhere, it’s almost as if the club has a plan that extends beyond 10 games or 6 months…

If you’ve lost faith in it then fair enough, I can’t change your mind. But sometimes I wonder why people watch the Boro. Not you specifically Indeedido, just generally on here. People just moan and moan. A 2-0 win should’ve been 3, a 1-0 win was lucky, the opposition win 1-0 and we were lucky it wasn’t 3, we score with a deflection and we were lucky, their striker scores with a deflection and, well, they all count. We do well and it’s a poor league, etc. On and on.

We need a director of football. No, not him. Him. No, the other one. We need better scouts. No, not those ones. The recruitment staff are sh*t. Yeah but they signed Muniz, didn’t they? Yes, well, we don’t know. But why isn’t Hoppe playing? I thought out recruitment team was sh*t? Erm. I mean, yeah but something else, something… something.

Roll on the next two weeks of this.
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Agree with all of that and add the fact that Tavenier is now "our best midfielder" when its only a few short months ago he was getting pelters on here!
 
BoroMart said:
IT's a good bit of inside info though, when one of Englands best CBs ever says the hardest ground he's ever played at was the Riverside, and that was a torrid match for them.
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I remember Ferdinand being done by Afonso in the 2-2, I imagine he did hate the riverside and also drug tests 😂
 
Maccarone said:
Time will tell but we can't keep ripping up a strategy and starting all over again, we need continuity and short/medium/long term goals.
We may need to be patient but it would help if Gibson spoke of his and the clubs strategy and plans, that way we can all buy into them.
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What, like the last time he made a similar statement and has been nothing but ridiculed about it by some ever since? Can't see us hearing from him anytime soon. Totally agree with your first part though (y)
 
Alexander Supertramp said:
Perfect timing to end our search for head of scouting, a couple of weeks after the transfer window has shut.


How long have we been looking? Did his signing drift?
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Scouting takes months. The next transfer window is only 3 months away. I can only see this as a positive - we need to find players who run under the radar of others because its clear we struggle to compete for them.
 
In 2005/6 the cup runs were negatively affecting our league form - we got to the qaurters of the League Cup, Semis of the FAC and final of the UEFA Cup. It was exciting times, but we were playing more games than most other teams often a Thursday night in Europe then Sunday. I also felt some teams played a bit harder against us to try and knock us off our perch.

Ref Tav -almost from when he first came into the side he made a positive impact, never understood the negative comments about him. The Club did want to sell him, certainly Wilder did not want to. A fair criticism of the club is that they should have tried harder earlier to get a replacement, but we don't know what was going on in the background.
A current problem with teh midfield is that Jones is under performing from his excellent form last season, to me this is nothing to do with Tav going.
 
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