All Activity

Matsuki and Stewart to start as for Boro, Christ, some of their fans have gone insane online. Some are suggesting an 8 figure fine at a minimum, and if not, Gibson to sue the club for £200m I thought northerners were tough old boots

A reminder of how the thread started v how's it going!

They seem incredibly insecure about the whole situation. They have no confidence in their side to beat us so are convincing themselves we will be thrown out of the play offs.

What I've noticed about Wood is he's a great last ditch defender but not so good at picking men up inside the box. He's about as good a back up as you'll get at this level though so no complaints from me.

Not sure about that, he's put in some pretty good performances in big games. Coventry away, Wrexham away, Ipswich home for example. And has generally held the ball up better than Stewart since he's been here. That wasn't the case yesterday though.

Diane Abbot for PM!

He got sent to the U18’s. 👀

Is there about to be a new broom sweeping away the bits of the new broom? Lots of articles on Catherine West launching a leadership bid on Monday. As a prompt for others. But are Rayner (HMRC), Streeting (Mandelson connections), Burnham (not a MP), Miliband (not even the best Miliband, despite union backing) ready? I'd read that both Rayner and Streeting had enough backing already to launch one. But there's also an Anyone but Ange campaign. Is West fronting for anyone in particular? An early campaign, not allowing Starmer a timetable for departure, rules out Burnham. Could there be enough in fighting, that one of the other brooms in the broom cabinet, ends up in charge, like a Reeves, Mahmood, Lammy or Cooper? Starmer hasn't much faith in any of them. If he goes, he considers that things will "descend into chaos"

A disappointing 1-0 defeat, to a Bourg-en-bresse side needing the points at the bottom of the table. VA.had their usual busy, without end product, start. As the game settled, they had the better of the chances. The best came off the underside of the bar and was cleared in the first half. In the second El-hadery took it just too far round the keeper, and it was cleared away close to the line. Around those, Appuah had an effort, while Courtet had a header, an acrobatic effort, and a quick turn and shot through a lot of bodies that was saved. It was beginning to look like a draw, when the home side's big centre half, Do Marcolino got up really well from a corner, to head it in, on 63 minutes. Abu had just come on for Airhiavbere, who had received a knock. He hit an early, direct ball to a central Appuah, that looked promising. But Appuah was then subbed. Without any target, or plan, VA's final 4 subs just made their side more disjointed. The home side had their own 1 on 1 that Lacombe blocked, and they finished the stronger side. A pitch invasion of happy home fans weaved their way around dishearted, departing VA players, Courtet keeping his obvious frustrations to himself, as best he could. 7 points off the relegation places, and 18 off promotion, VA are now in the middle of a midtable pack. They could still drop another couple of places. So a last good result would at least end the season on a small positive.

Wood can defend well but I noticed today how quickly he tries to get rid of the ball when it's passed to him. He's not terrible in possession but it's clear he's not as comfortable with it as THB or Jack.

He wilts under pressure imo 🤷

Thanks for the insight, confirms my suspicions. The time to have kicked off over cheating in football was with the scourge of diving, but that particular cat got out of the bag decades ago and there has been no real appetite to tackle that problem. This is just due diligence on steroids, and we'll need to do this sort of thing to keep up with the others if we get promoted.

Harsh on Wood, I thought he did ok. I'd prefer Stephens but Woods has his strengths too.

If you examine our statement it is pretty anodyne. No admission of guilt.

Only watched the first half, but even though they were all over us I didn't feel particularly panicky - the players seemed very calm about the situation, maybe a bit too calm and passive tbh. Thought Larin, Fellows, Azaz were all poor, the few times we had it they all seemed out of sync and gave it away too easily. At the back Wood was awful, I think their plan was to let him have it then press him hard when he stepped forward and he duly coughed up the ball a number of times. Couldn't watch the 2nd half but sounds better. I do feel Azaz seems a bit out of sorts the last couple of games, could play one of Bragg / Charles there or Matsuki even...?

Fry was very good very strong and like you say Larin had no Close enough to him to lay it off to. Our front 4, aside from a couple of decent crosses weren’t at it today but Tuesday will be different with Azaz and a Scienza will Have more impact and of Stewart starts I think he’ll get goal

They’ve got so wound up they forget about the tie altogether. They need to regroup quickly. All that said we were far from perfect.

At least if the game goes to penalties, we have a trusty penalty taker... Peretz scored two League penalties early in his career. 2 mins 14

Absolutely. The weird little freaks have lost their mind so much they don’t know which way to turn.

I think Middlesbrough have absolutely shit the bed today. They riled the fans up, the team were seen to be going 100 miles an hour for the first half and didn’t capitalise. Second half they were pretty ordinary by the sounds of it, and nearly lost it. The manager sounds dejected and is now throwing the “it’s unacceptable for Southampton” even more than he previously was. Pre-game he played it down massively. Their fans sound dejected and angry and they sound nervous ahead of Tuesday night. Rattled northerners are the funniest.

Yeah Larin suffered from a few things I think today; 1. He does hold up play brilliantly, but a lot of the time he relies on being able to knock the ball 1, 2 or 3 metres at most to a nearby Saints player. We were defending more, so no one close enough to sweep up the little taps from his hold up, hence 'Boro picked them up 2. Their centre back, Fry, was actually very good at not letting Larin get away with pushing him around so much - I liked him 3. Larin went down a fair amount to start with, the ref was not having any of it, rightly so

Jordan Sibley those days bullying dry cleaners with Cortese demands starting to pay off 👏👏👏👏

Fuck me Ukraine is so far down the woke league right now we need to raise our game. Get those badges pinned on and Facebook filters added, don’t forget the things we need to care about just because they’re not currently fashionable. The summer is coming and oil will soon be back shooting up the woke league

They kept singing "there's only one Stevie Gibson" today along with the cheating bastards song. Proper odd behaviour.

Who, Al-sex Ji-minorz? I think that story will go on much longer than Spygate