The Lenihan deal shows Wilder is the right man for the Boro job

viv_andersons_nana said:
For years the Boro have needed a proper central defender. This goes back to when we were in the Premier League and subsequently relegated. We had Ben Gibson and nothing else, nothing for years before him. Monk, Pulis, Woodgate and Warnock never signed a proper one between them in about six seasons combined, despite it being a clear area of the team that needed to be improved right across that time. Flint, Shotton, Mokoudi. Bamba was the best of the bunch, a bloke in his mid-30s just back from a serious illness and with his best years firmly behind him.

Wilder comes in and has now seemingly signed one of the best in the division in Darragh Lenihan. To my mind this bodes well and shows that there's no messing about now. No stop gaps, no short termism. Lenihan has 250 games under his belt and wore the armband for his former club. He is exactly what the Boro have needed for a very long time IMO.

Fingers crossed they get the deal completed and we can look ahead to the next one coming in.
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I'll take your word for it viv, in a nice way because I've never heard of him, usually look for Diego assessment on potential signings

I actually thought Flint would have been a hard, no nonsense CB after seeing him perform for Bristol City, sadly it didnt work out

Its been mentioned he's not played much over the last 2 seasons, hopefully not injuries & we get a CHB we can rely on week in week out

Good business though 👍
 
Norman_Conquest said:
I am not silly enough to suggest it couldn't happen with any other manager but there is something about Wilder that I can't put my finger on and this is stopping me from backing him 100%.

I am not saying I am right and want to be proved wrong, I think he's the best manager we've had since Karanka and would love him to commit long term.

Viv - You say it's not backed up by fact then discuss the Burnley situation. I had this feeling prior to that but that saga didn't help and I think it cost us a place in the play-offs.
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I mentioned not long after he was brought in I hope he's one of our longest serving managers, it'll mean he's doing a good job
 
asredastheycome said:
And yet we have just signed one. Do you not see how important a left footed CB is. We tried Fry their last season and he was terrible. McNair likewise was really poor playing LS. He was constantly getting turned and wrong footed and ended up giving silly free kicks away in dangerous postions. Get square pegs for square hold not round ones.
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Yes, that's a fair point if the defence was giving away needless free kicks.

But then again Boro's defensive record last season was reasonable, comparable with teams in the top 6, especially if you take away the last day fiasco. Blackburn's defence was no better.

What I'm frustrated about is the club might be headed down the same wrong road again. Just strengthening the defence is not going to improve Boro's chances of promotion. Last season unravelled because of the lack of goals scored, not the defence. The only forward linked so far is some bloke from Newcastle who hasn't played much in recent seasons. Another Ameobi?

If this means Fry or McNair leaves, for a fee, then I guess it's ok. But the club really needs to make a statement signing soon, and it has to be a proven goalscorer. With a likely revenue of £25 - £35 million the club can't afford to build a big squad. And the immediate goal is promotion, not to win the Prem League or Champions League. This means signing players who are good enough to win promotion. That's all. Staying in the Prem League is a wholly different challenge. If Boro is promoted then a £150 million cash injection would help to fund a bigger squad and a much better team.

So that's why I wonder why Boro is offering a 4 year contract to a bloke who didn't attract attention from any Prem League team. Two years would be enough to decide whether he's part of the problem or part of the solution. If he does well then keep him, or get rid of him sooner.

As it is, he's likely to be at Boro longer than Wilder. Whoever is the next manager would be involved in another rebuild, so he may be superfluous.

Whatever, it just seems like another strange decision at this stage. I hope I'm wrong.
 
Fry out for me, hes had plenty of time now to progress and lacks leadership and constantly gets bullied. He had a few great games against some good teams last year but its few and far between.

We still need a lcb as a priority.

You dont stop signing other positions just because we need a gk, there are lots of priorities to sort
 
Buying players in the transfer window isn’t a linear process. It’s not like we have to get the no.1 priority position sorted first, then the second and so on. We needed a CB. We can’t go a full season with 3 senior CBs - just because that’s our first signing this summer doesn’t mean the other priority positions aren’t being worked on!
 
It might sound like a daft thing to say but sometimes managers get lucky with signings and I wonder if Lenihan might be one of those occasions for Wilder.

What I mean by that is a good player comes available and you are able to pick them up without much competition from other clubs. I would have thought for one of the best defenders in this division, we'd have competition from the better Championship clubs and lower Premier league clubs.

Sometimes those players can totally transform your team and I'm hoping that this is the case for us in this situation. It reminds me of the signings of Southgate and Boateng, two absolutely brilliant players and two leaders as well. We knew they were good signings at the time but when you look back I think bigger clubs than us missed out by not taking either of them.
 
BoroMart said:
He's an aggressive player, 56 yellows in 220 games. He'll miss 3-5 games through suspension, no doubt.

Resale value? He's a free transfer, so it's kind of irrelevant, if we sold him after 2 or 3years for 2mill we'd make a 2mill profit, which would probably pay for his 3 years of wages to be honest. It's a low risk, no brainer, financially.


We aren't good enough at CB, we lack leadership, organisation and strength he brings all that
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Last season he would have only be suspended for his red.

His yellow cards per season (that’s assuming he played every game each season, ie 220/46) would result in 1 game suspension averaged out on that. Not sure why he’s been pigeon hold by soutra that this is a negative point.
 
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Think this thread is a load of rubbish myself and a classic case of people hyping new transfers over our own. The same hype was written about Balogun and Connolly in January.

Coming in to push Fry out of the team... have a word. :ROFLMAO:
 
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We have 2 CB's in Fry and Hall.
We have a RCB in Dijksteel.
McNair is an ill fitting LCB.
Wood should be in position to challenge, but he isn't.
With Bamba and Peltier moving on and Hall very likely to, there was a major need to recruit a CB and a LCB. This would arguably still leave us thin.
The fact we have signed one of the division's top rated CB's on a free, who can be sold at any time for profit to offset his wages should be celebrated.
I think it appears a very good deal.

I would far rather we spend our (considerable) transfer budget on forwards who will score.
We now need a LWB, a LCB, a GK, a DCM and 3 strikers. Plus a replacement for whoever out of Fry, Tavernier or McNair might be sold.
Other frees and good loans will be important, but I believe there is scope to sign very well up front.

There is no running order of signings that will match the priority order of positions. Transfer windows don't work like that, there are too many variables.
 
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