Middlesbrough 2-0 Bolton

Was freezing my nuts off at the Riverside with 700 hardcore fans. Didn’t expect anything,hoped for a point. Lucky deflection by a ten million pound player for 1-0.
Then 2-0 by a 16 million pound player. The same side beat us 3-0 at the Reebok while playing 3-5-2 formation. Since implementing 4-2-3-1 we have obtained 17 points.
It might not be pretty but it’s been effective. Who knows if we stay in the Championship we could get snapped up. Money to buy players. Promotion.
But fuck me Bolton fans would complain because they were staying up on the last day of the season. You can’t please everyone. I was watching a Birmingham vlog,where there fans are pulling there hair out as they have got rid of Carson Yeung now got owners who know little about the game ,brought in Zola,then Redknapp spent £16 million on strikers and then he left they gave ste coterill a 2 and half years contract and they’re resigned to relegation. Stop bitching get to the Macron New Year’s Day let’s try get 20-000 and cheer the lads on.

Wanderers for 45 wrote:Was freezing my nuts off at the Riverside with 700 hardcore fans. Didn’t expect anything,hoped for a point. Lucky deflection by a ten million pound player for 1-0.
Then 2-0 by a 16 million pound player. The same side beat us 3-0 at the Reebok while playing 3-5-2  formation. Since implementing 4-2-3-1 we have obtained 17 points.
It might not be pretty but it’s been effective. Who knows if we stay in the Championship we could get snapped up. Money to buy players. Promotion.
But fuck me Bolton fans would complain because they were staying up on the last day of the season. You can’t please everyone. I was watching a  Birmingham vlog,where there fans are pulling there hair out as they have got rid of Carson Yeung now got owners who know little about the game ,brought in Zola,then Redknapp spent £16 million on strikers and then he left they gave ste coterill a 2 and half years contract and they’re resigned to relegation.  Stop bitching get to the Macron New Year’s Day let’s try get 20-000 and cheer the lads on.

Lol

Norpig wrote:i want us to stay up but we just don't score enough goals and i can't see that changing if Parky continues with the hoofball.

I've been to countless matches under Parky's reign and been quite mortified by the style of play. I don't deny that. But can you honestly say that with this group of nobodies - loan players that haven't started shaving yet, cheap freebies, etc. - he could give some other strategy a go, and if it didn't work, everybody would stand back and say: fair play, we tried something different, we're still shit, we've just gotta see out this season and let Parky start rebuilding again for League One.

There's literally no scenario in which people would sit back and watch us be this shit without finding a bone to pick with Parkinson. Or is there?

Admittedly it could all change just like that if a certain two or three players got injured or sold, but we're actually in with a chance of staying up. Not a massive one, but we're a point adrift as it stands, not ten or fifteen which was the way it was going up until a few months ago.

Wanderers for 45 wrote:Stop bitching get to the Macron New Year’s Day let’s try get 20-000 and cheer the lads on.

Hello Ken.

doffcocker wrote:I've been to countless matches under Parky's reign and been quite mortified by the style of play. I don't deny that. But can you honestly say that with this group of nobodies - loan players that haven't started shaving yet, cheap freebies, etc. - he could give some other strategy a go, and if it didn't work, everybody would stand back and say: fair play, we tried something different, we're still shit, we've just gotta see out this season and let Parky start rebuilding again for League One.

You massive knob. Against Sheffield Wednesday we were superb, the game could have gone either way but we won and created a shitload of chances.

The players have proved they can do it, but Parky still insists on this spoiling tactic THAT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

doffcocker wrote:I've been to countless matches under Parky's reign and been quite mortified by the style of play. I don't deny that. But can you honestly say that with this group of nobodies - loan players that haven't started shaving yet, cheap freebies, etc. - he could give some other strategy a go, and if it didn't work, everybody would stand back and say: fair play, we tried something different, we're still shit, we've just gotta see out this season and let Parky start rebuilding again for League One.

You massive knob. Against Sheffield Wednesday we were superb, the game could have gone either way but we won and created a shitload of chances.

The players have proved they can do it, but Parky still insists on this spoiling tactic THAT DOESN'T FUCKING WORK.

But we've already had this debate, in which I routinely tore you a new bumhole.

You keep going back to this Sheffield Wednesday match, as though Parky - just as a one off, for the hell of it - 12 games into the season decided we'd play a completely different system, then despite that we won and played entertaining football for the first time, reverted straight back to the proven boring ineffective system of old.

But this foolish logic of yours is beside the point. You admit that in that match the game could have gone either way. In other words, a lot of it boiled down to luck not just Parkinson's tactics. So supposing we'd have got unlucky and lost. Would you have been on here that night urging everyone to cut Parky some slack? Would you balls.

doffcocker wrote:

Norpig wrote:i want us to stay up but we just don't score enough goals and i can't see that changing if Parky continues with the hoofball.

I've been to countless matches under Parky's reign and been quite mortified by the style of play. I don't deny that. But can you honestly say that with this group of nobodies - loan players that haven't started shaving yet, cheap freebies, etc. - he could give some other strategy a go, and if it didn't work, everybody would stand back and say: fair play, we tried something different, we're still shit, we've just gotta see out this season and let Parky start rebuilding again for League One.

There's literally no scenario in which people would sit back and watch us be this shit without finding a bone to pick with Parkinson. Or is there?

Admittedly it could all change just like that if a certain two or three players got injured or sold, but we're actually in with a chance of staying up. Not a massive one, but we're a point adrift as it stands, not ten or fifteen which was the way it was going up until a few months ago.

If he actually tried something new and we started to actually play a bit of football then i think most fans wouldn't give him any more shit than he already gets if we did get relegated.
What do we have to lose? All this blind optimism that we just keep doing what we are doing and it will come good is just wishful thinking, we've had a bit better form of late but we are still in the bottom 3 and as i said we have little actual goal threat.
People will just not pay good money to watch us at the moment so KA is deluding himself if he thinks people are going to turn up to watch us play route one and start with 1 striker and 2 holding midfielders at home.

MartinBWFC wrote:

T.R.O.Y wrote:Sluffy’s right in as much as Parkinson has the odds stacked against him heavily in regards to avoiding relegation, and going away to a club like ‘boro anything other than defeat would be a surprise.

Millwall are an interesting comparison, on the one hand they prove the point that Parky should be doing better (although he’s still operating under more difficult constraints than them).

On the other, Neil Harris plays a very similar style of ‘pragmatic’ (aka one dimensional) football as the one Parky is getting flack for favouring.

One thing I’m not reading is what Parkinson should be doing? His options are limited from what I can see.

He could start by trying a different system, it is no coincidence that our possession stats are extremely poor, the fact we lose possession so quickly is down to hoofing it to one striker who then gives away easy possession, hence the opposition mounting attack after attack, it is my opinion that he knows no other way of playing.

He did try a different system, but since changing to 4231 with Henry and Pratley at the base of the midfield our points per game has been good, so why change it? I think he's actually found a system that gets results.

I'd have ALF coming off the bench more often, but obviously there's more to this than meets the eye otherwise he'd be on the bench. Overall though there's not much more he can do with the limited options he has.

There's the old adage about "making your own luck" and there's some truth to it as demonstrated by Boro for example if you have more attempts on goal then it stands to reason that statistically you'll get more lucky deflections and conversely if you sit back and concede possession so that the game is played nearer your goal then you have less chance of getting a lucky break yourself and if you do it's more likely to be too far away from the opposition's goal to have an impact on the scoreboard.

And whilst I agree that our tactics could improve - and be adapted for different game situations - there is some hope. If you take Sluffy's argument about the improvement after 11 games the way that fixtures are arranged means we'll play those same teams we played at the beginning again towards the end of the season but with a theoretically improved team. I'm not holding out much hope for a miracle signing or two in January that will transform us, so the question is what improvements will the rest make? All is not lost yet, but our situation is pretty dire - which in all honesty most of us expected when the season began. That said, we were just about sunk after 11 games so we have to be pleased with the fact that we are at least back in contention.