marketharboroughfox

They generally do much better against teams who try to take them on than those who sit in deep and try to counter. I'd go for a similar line up and approach to what we tried at Boro.

Why is it not possible? Players can be sold and released, facilities and land can be sold off too.

I'm talking about in the scenario where we go down. Clearly it'd be much more preferable to rebuild the club in a higher division.

Given that we have won just 4 league games in the past 3 months, this does look...fanciful.

Better to do that and eventually come back with our house in order than disappear entirely.

If memory serves they cleared out the majority of their Championship squad, held on to a small number and basically rebuilt the squad. We'd have to do the same.

Sunderland entered this division in a similar state and I see that as the closest comparison if we do go down. Expensive facilities, players on absurd contracts, owner who'd given up etc etc. I've said above and before, in the moderate term we are going to need to accept a serious amount of downsizing in terms of not just the squad but also the facilities. Notwithstanding what you've written I still think enough players will be sold or released to get the numbers to work next season if relegated.

The vast majority of the 'legacy' high earners will be sold or released. The likes of Faes unfortunately have another year to go and their sale value negligible, but the summer will see a lot of relief on the wage bill as a minimum. Fully agree with what 'should' be done. But if we had owners doing what 'should' be done all along, we'd probably be halfway up the Prem and not staring down at the third tier.

It didn't look like desire was the problem yesterday, but Norwich are a side full of confidence whereas ours are pretty fragile. Confidence makes a huge difference to players, perhaps more than it used to.

What I don't know is to what extent his family has influence over him, Chansiri of course was regarded by his wider family as an embarrassment and they washed their hands of him. At some point, you have to admit the game's up, cut your losses and move on. If stuff gets mothballed it don't get sold. I can't see what you're describing at the end happening, at least not yet. Points deduction in L1 quite possibly, but should still be playing in the same ground and training at the same facilities. I will say though, we have burned through all the transfer revenue and parachute money we were due. I expect we will raise enough in sales in the summer to keep things going for another season, but after that there needs to be some serious downsizing. Selling off part/all of Belvoir Drive, Seagrave etc looks unavoidable.

The realistic worst case scenario is what happened with Chansiri at Sheff W, and both him and Top seem to share similar characteristics. Chansiri eventually had to admit defeat, so will Top.

Wouldn't hold your breath...

In fairness you couldn't get much more polar opposites in fixture difficulty comparing Boro away with Sheff W at home.

Fair point, fixtures for all 3 look of similar difficulty too.

West Brom look even worse tbh. We really should be outperforming them even taking the above into account.

I was there as someone in my mid 30s and was happy to do it. If this isn't the time to stand up for the sake of the club's future, when is?

They're definitely susceptible to being hit on the break and to giving up possession close to goal, I'd actually back us to score one or two. The issue is we're hopeless at the back-if in a week of training Rowett can tighten things up even just a bit while we keep scoring regularly enough, we can get something here. I don't buy the 'shit league this season' arguments though. Cov were on course to break all sorts of records before illness ripped through their squad, and Boro have looked superb under the new manager. Ipswich have assembled on paper one of the strongest squads in recent years but haven't utilised it often enough.

It's also hard to underscore how useful it is to have a keeper who knows what he's doing, and they're not as expensive/hard to find as outfield players.

Many more twists and turns to come as far as the autos are concerned, Sheff Utd is a very tough fixture for them. Low-mid 80s should be enough to secure it this year I think.

It's two points dropped, no question. Quite how any of those chances at the end wasn't taken I've no idea. At least Cov did us a favour.

Jesus wept, about four chances to win in the last minute!

Tottenham?

If this is what Stoke are doing, then Boro...yeah, best not thinking about that.

Nowhere near good enough, huge 45 minutes coming up.

The vast majority of teams in this division are pretty streaky with their form. Yes Blackburn and Portsmouth have had good runs lately, they've had them at other points in the season too and followed them up with bad form as well. That said, next week's fixtures are pretty daunting and there's no denying we really need a result today. As opposition goes, you couldn't ask much better than a Stoke side in even worse form than ourselves. Come the close of play we could well be out of that bottom 3.