Borough come to town.

[The Blobster]

Although not firing on all cylinders Borough are one of the championships better footballing teams .
I expect them to give us a tough , torrid afternoon .
We will have to be at our very best to get anything from this game .

 

[Yankee_Jack]

We seem to have our most trouble with the teams whose football is dominated with physical vs technical. If we show up to play, we could do better than we might otherwise expect.

 

[ivoralljack]

Hard game in prospect and we need to see substantial improvement on recent form if we hope to get something from it. But you never know with us and Sheehan has had a bit more time to work with the players. Nevertheless I expect Boro will win but I'd take a draw. We need to keep nicking points to edge away from the bottom places, so one will be better than zilch. Mind you, the festive period tends to throw out a lot of surprises and I'm hoping we can spring one on saturday.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Boro are only 2 points better than us with an inferior goal difference. They may "look" better than us on the field, but their results have been minimally better. They should be just as worried about coming down to play us.

We are now 8 points off 6th. We need a win as does Boro to stay in the hunt.

 

[ivoralljack]

You beat me to it @Yankee_Jack. During dinner I was catching up with the sports pages in my newspaper and I noticed, as you said, that Boro are only 2 points better off than we are. Further, they are on a bad run of 4 defeats in their last 5 games including 2 home losses in just 4 days. They lost 1-2 to Hull last night.

It is evident that right now they might be low on confidence and if we can make a fast start, maybe scoring early, they just might think: "Oh, no, here we go again!" If I were Sheehan, my instructions would be to go for the jugular from the first whistle and see if we can get at them.

If anyone's interested (I doubt it), I had a family-size Quiche Lorraine with Katsu curry dip for dinner, herby/garlic baby potatoes, asparagus tips in butter and a Caesar side salad washed down with a crisp, very cold Spanish white wine. Dessert was simple - all butter Jamaican rum mince tart with double cream. And now I feel as fat as a hog!!

 

[The Blobster]

Bloody hell , I've put on a stone just reading about your lunch !

 

[ivoralljack]

Bloody hell , I've put on a stone just reading about your lunch !

Lunch? That was dinner! I had leek and potato soup (home-made), a chunk of cheddar cheese and crusty bread for lunch. And I intend to have a ham sandwich with mustard and a little portion of St Agur cheese with turkey and stuffing flavour crisps as a garnish for supper. Oh, and I had a poached egg on toast with two rashers of bacon for brekky. Don't want to risk getting hunger pangs.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Lunch? That was dinner! I had leek and potato soup (home-made), a chunk of cheddar cheese and crusty bread for lunch. And I intend to have a ham sandwich with mustard and a little portion of St Agur cheese with turkey and stuffing flavour crisps as a garnish for supper. Oh, and I had a poached egg on toast with two rashers of bacon for brekky. Don't want to risk getting hunger pangs.

Sounds to me like you're building up to go on a hunger strike if Cullen doesn't start at #9 soon

 

[ivoralljack]

Trouble is it's been so long since he started there he'll be like a fish out of water until he finds his rhythm again. That's if he's ever given the chance.

 

[CroJack]

They lost 1-2 to Hull last night.

They should've scored at least 5 goals. A combo of ineffective forwards and sloppy/terrible defending cost them 3 points.

Fair result Boro 5 : 2 Hull.

They deserved to lose to Ipswich at their home turf. Ipswich did to them what Ipswich do to all other Championship clubs: high pressing/gegenpressing, quick transitions, direct forward passes and attacking, clinical finishing.

Fair result Boro 1 : 4 Ipswich.

Crazy game away at Leeds.

Fair result Leeds 6 : 5 Boro

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Boro play Martin's ball, but they have more pace up front than Swans had under Martin. They play out from the back and are error-prone if you press them high. They are poor at blocking crosses and their overall defending sucks. Their striker Latte reminds me of Lowe - can do something magical but misses a lot of chances.

 

[CroJack]

Swansea v Middlesbrough Attacking Stats

Middlesbrough are much better than Swans at creating chances


But their strikers/forwards are ineffective (7 goals short off 39 xGoals)


They shoot more than Swans (50 more shots so far)


And they are second best at hitting the target



They have 132 more touches in opposition box than Swans
​

 

[CroJack]

They have had almost double as many one-twos than Swans (pass & move when attacking opposition box)



They have the best shot accuracy in the Championship


They are awful at crossing


And they have had 32 more successful dribbles than Swans

​

 

[CroJack]

Swans v Middlesbrough Defensive Stats

Boro don't allow many quality chances against


But they concede many goals, which tells me that either their defenders or goalkeeper suck (or both)


Thery don't concede meny shots either


They are mediocre when it comes to on-target shots conceded


They don't allow many opposition touches in their own box
​

 

[CroJack]

Middlesbrough goalie doesn't make many saves


And he has an awful save ratio (second-worst in the Championship)



Physicality

Just like Swans, Boro don't tackle


Pressing

Boro are not good at pressing



But they are much better at gegen-pressing (pressing immediately after losing the ball)
​

 

[CroJack]

They are, just like Swans, happy to allow opposition pass the ball around for a while before they start a defensive action (press, tackle, intercept and steal the ball, etc.)


​

 

[Yankee_Jack]

Wow. Looking forward to seeing how this match shakes out.

 

[CroJack]

Conclusion:

If we want to beat them, we need to exploit their weaknesses and press them high at every opportunity, forcing their goalkeeper and defenders to make mistakes. Lots of crosses and shots would help. We should try to do what Ipswich did to them.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

In Sheehan's vernacular ... "working on how to hurt them"

 

[CroJack]

In Sheehan's vernacular ... "working on how to hurt them"

He needs to watch the replays of the Swans games under Martin, when we used to pass the ball around the back with Fisher in goal and defenders who could not concentrate for 50 minutes (the average time the ball is in play) and constantly gave the ball away in our third.

 

[Yankee_Jack]

With Rushworth in goal, our objective should be to keep the ball outside the box on the periphery. Keeper should be able to handle any long range efforts. Contrary at the other end ... our #1 objective should be to fire the ball into the box every chance we get - low or high it doesn't matter, just get the defenders facing the wrong way and force them and their keeper to work