Basketball is a game that is spoiled because there are too many points scored. One team attacks and scores, the other team attacks and scores, then one might miss, then the other scores, over and over. It’s too easy to get the ball in the hoop and scoring isn’t important enough to be meaningful. That’s why football, in my opinion, is more enjoyable to watch, there are far fewer scoring opportunities so goals are far more important and enjoyable when they do get scored. But the downside is that you get occasional games where no goals are scored – like when Town played Middlesbrough yesterday.
In fact, if you were going to use this game as an advert for the sport of football you would do little to tempt any neutral into ever watching the sport ever again. It was a dire game which will not live long in anyone’s memory. It’s almost impossible for a football match to be played out without some noteworthy incident to take place but this was about as much of a none-event as it’s possible for a football match to be.
Introductions are supposed to whet the readers appetite for what’s to come in the main article rather than put them off, but I’m trying to be honest with you. This game was deathly dull and I’m not going to pretend there were fireworks and dragon slayings yesterday afternoon on Teesside. It was two pretty miserable football teams canceling each other out for 90 minutes. There wasn’t even that much to get angry about either, so there isn’t even the entertaining rage-humour thing that can be fun to do sometimes, it was just a dull but not to be sniffed at away point for Town. I’ll try and squeeze a few hundred more words out of it anyway…
Were there any talking points?
Thinking really hard, I suppose there were some “events” in this game which almost passed the threshold of being worth talking about. Some Middlesbrough fans may think they were unfairly denied a couple of penalty shouts but I think they’d be wrong. There was a handball incident where the ball struck Tom Lees hand but it was one of those ones where the ball was traveling at speed and his arm was there already. You have to accept that defenders have arms and they have to exist somewhere in the penalty area, so just because the ball is whacked where Lees was keeping his arms doesn’t mean you get a penalty. Then there was another one involving Lees where a Middlebrough player chucked themselves to the floor and should have been booked. So neither really deserve a great deal of analysis.
One that I think Town did genuinely get away with was when Nicholls had to race off his line to go one on one with Middlesbrough’s Watmore (I think, but I might be wrong) and absolutely clattered him. Thankfully the flag was up so the ref didn’t have to make a decision about the incident but I think Nicholls could have been in bother if the flag stayed down. Thankfully both players weren’t hurt by the incident but that coming together would most likely have been avoided with an early flag from the linesman, which is another reason why it’s quite annoying that they are instructed to wait until the very last moment to raise their flags these days.
In terms of chances for Town, the best two opportunities came close together in the opening seconds of the second half. The first was a speculative effort from Rudoni that he struck from long range, straight at their keeper. He really struggled with the shot and spilled it straight into Danny Ward’s path and our main striker didn’t do nearly well enough with his follow up shot. Boro’s keeper looked dodgy all game, so it’s disappointing we didn’t give him more work to do really, as I think he’d have struggled if we had tested him more.
Other than those incidents, it was really only corner kicks where Town looked threatening. We obviously fancied forcing an error out of the keeper, as we packed out the six-yard box and Sorba swung in low and hard crosses just under the crossbar, which sent their keeper into a panic. One hit the crossbar and others caused alarm but obviously none led to the goal that we hoped for.
A good point and an improved defensive performance
I’ve been a bit negative about Town in this article so far, but I must say that there were some encouraging signs in this game. Against Rotherham and Preston last week, I was very worried about some of the things I’d seen with Town. We looked so disorganised at the back and had so little creativity going forward. While we weren’t exactly free-flowing in attack yesterday, at least we had a solid base and the tweaked shape had us looking able to create more opportunities than in previous games.
Middlesbrough were pretty hopeless for long periods, so that certainly helped to make Town’s defence look more solid but we also marshalled them well for long periods and kept a decent shape when they did manage to string a few passes together (which they didn’t manage on many occasions).
We have to accept that we are bottom of the league and we can’t expect to go away from home and play teams off the park. We’ve been a poor team for a while now and trying to play fancy football is going to most likely lead to being too open and getting exposed, so having a solid base and building upon that seems like a more sensible approach. It’s dull to watch but at least we can build a bit of confidence from the clean sheet and the head coach can work on the offensive side with his players.
Middlesbrough: Another poor Championship team
I have been really surprised about how many teams Town have played this season that have been bad. The standard of football this season in the Championship, on average, has been awful. Which makes it all the more embarrassing that we’re the bottom of the league. We’re the worst of a bad bunch.
On the bright side though, we don’t have to improve a great deal to be better than some of the dross around us. I can think of very few teams we’ve played this season that have been genuinely good. Some teams have had good players but not played good football. Others have had good ten minutes spells. But I think there’s only really Burnley on the opening day that I can say that I’ve actually been impressed by so far.
When I saw Middeslbrough’s starting eleven yesterday I was surprised by their league position because they’ve got a lot of Championship experience in their lineup but after watching them play for a while it was clear why they are where they are. Michael Carrick has a lot of work on his hands to get a tune out of that team. While there are some decent individuals in their ranks, they were not playing as a team.
What next for Town?
Town face Millwall next weekend at home and will have to lift their levels if they want to get something out of that game. While Millwall aren’t world beaters, they aren’t rubbish either and recently we’ve only looked like taking points off other struggling teams. Now we’ve got to show we can go toe-to-toe with a competent team and win a game. The home advantage will help but only if the players do enough to keep the fans on their side as things could turn ugly if the fans get frustrated.
The fact there’s no mid-week fixture this week will help Fotheringham. He’s not had many weeks like that since he’s come in, so he’ll have a rare opportunity to get on the training pitch and do some proper work this week, rather than just recovery and preparation for games. I just hope he doesn’t make the same mistake Carlos did in his early days and thrash the players too hard in training and injure them. Those early murderball days led to a series of hamstring injuries which meant we were down to the bare bones of the squad and our current squad doesn’t have the depth to support a similar injury list.
The run to the World Cup will be key for Mark Fotheringham
Millwall will be the start of a run of 5 games in 15 days which will take us up to the World Cup. Here’s what that run looks like:
- Millwall at home
- Sunderland at home
- Blackburn away
- QPR away
- Swansea at home
So far Fotheringham has won one and drawn two of his six games in charge of Town, which is a fairly meagre return. It’s early days and I’m not going to judge him at this stage. I am probably going to judge him by the time we get to the end of the Swansea game though, as he’ll have had eleven games at the helm by then and if we’re still bottom of the league and performances aren’t improving much then questions may start to be asked.
I’m hopeful that things will be picking up by then though. If we can pick up a few wins in the next few weeks that will take a bit of pressure off and then that World Cup break will give Fotheringham chance a good few weeks to run a mini-preseason with the bulk of his squad where he can really get his ideas across and work on what he wants them to do.
If things don’t improve with Fotheringham then I don’t think it’s just his head that should roll. I think we’ve gone with two inexperienced managers in a row this season because experienced managers won’t come due to the management structure we have in place. So I think we’d have to get rid of that too if this coach fails. That’s a huge change and a decision that wouldn’t be taken lightly, so I suspect a lot of people will be really keen for Fotheringham to do well – hopefully he will.
Unless I missed it, I don’t think you wrote about the Preston game? I thought that was about as boring as football can get but it seems like yesterday’s match competes in boredom ranking.
Loved the bit about Lees’ arms.
Before getting too cheered by an away point, once you get detached from 21st place, it’s only wins that start to bridge the gap. A point a game is relegation form.
I didn’t attend the game and due to my current disillusioned state of mind, chose to pretty much ignore it apart from the 56 second clip on SKY, notice I didn’t incorporate the word highlights; nevertheless chuffed with a draw and even more with a clean sheet, as you say these will be paramount if the season is to be saved.
TS your last paragraph really struck a chord with me regarding malfunctioning management. Five of our previous six seasons have been relegation battles, admittedly before that we had the remarkable visit to the Premier League, but prior to this there were seasons of promise and relative success, these were largely, but not entirely, in League 1, perhaps this is our natural home and unfortunately where we are heading.
Neither Danny Schofield nor MF had/have been given adequate resources to tackle the task in hand and whose responsible for that?
Should be Beck Lane!!!!
I travelled up to the game yesterday and apart from getting a parking fine for my troubles, it was a pretty much a none event. Having said that Town players generally worked very hard to secure the point.
We are clearly devoid of any real quality up front. I can’t recall Danny Ward winning one ball in the air the entire time he played. He was a yard short of pace in the first half when he should have anticipated a superb ball in from Thomas, which many a better centre forward would have scored from. In the second half he should have buried the follow up from Rudoni’s shot, but shit tamely back at the keeper, and then shook his head in disbelief. Apart from that Ward was non existent and rightfully substituted after about 60 minutes. However, whilst Rhodes does appear to work harder, he too is clearly past his best for this level of football, and posed no real threat to their defence.
So I’m afraid with these 2 up front I really can’t see us troubling many defences and getting the goals we need to get out of this mess. Equally if Thomas suffers a long term injury or has a big dip in form then we really have no other alternative from dead ball situations.
As the game progressed it was also apparent that Nakayama was starting to be taken apart by Boro’s number 2, so I struggled to understand why we left it so late to bring Jackson on to help the guy out. We were lucky in that respect we were not punished, by what in reality was a very poor Middlesbrough team.
On the whole though it was a point won, not two lost, but I really cannot see where 14 wins from 31 games are going to come from to get us over the 50 point mark we need to ensure championship survival. As one reader has said may be league 1 is the level our finances support. Sad as that may be, given the huge premier league money the club has squandered over the last 4 seasons.
Should have said shot tamely but maybe I was right first time 😀
I can’t remember a worse state of affairs than at the moment.It is so obvious we are not going to score goals with our two current strikers.We are relying on The new lad Simpson in November but how long will it take for him to come up to speed after such a long layoff.Without sounding like a a stuck needle the Owners should have got some quality strikers in the summer regardless of Corberan leaving.I am sure the £10 million
Plus Town received from the sales of O’Brien and Toffolow would have gone a long way in bringing in some young lean and mean strikers from the lower leagues.But alas Hoyle is trying to recoup the money he has lent to the club.My advice Dean is to sell the club to a dynamic owner who wants Town to shoot up the league into the premiership but unfortunately Town are now staring down the barrel of League one. UTT
The early/mid 70s were worse – 3 relegations in 4 seasons. And yet somehow this feels worse because it’s self-inflicted. Squandering Premier League money, selling the 2 best players and trousering the cash, appointing managers with no experience in the hot seat – the Board has a lot to answer for.
Agreed. Hopefully TS is right that the defensive set-up is looking more promising, but up front things still seem dire. Anyone know when Jones is due back? I’d like to believe he could provide some spark there.
I agree entirely with your comments about the management structure. It needs saying and repeating until something is done. Apart from anything else (cheap lazy recruitment) it is a disincentive to any self-respecting hopeful from applying for the coach/manager job in future.
At least the manager seemed to take some pride in achieving some kind of basic defensive organisation. Previously he seems to have only been excited by the prospect of scoring goals, despite there being plenty of evidence that wasnt going to happpen, and that most successful teams build from the back.