kit

Cant get out of our half for the last 5 minutes or so.

The few times we've gone direct its been ok, but whenever we play it around and try to go through midfield and we are losing the ball often in poor territory with players out of position. Not best 25 from either team so far.

The only thing that looks like it will keep this game in single figures is if arsenal drop their intensity. Sheffield U were pretty shit last season, only added a couple so no surprise they are where they are.

How much does pride ego and cost as that is the main barrier. We have ffp headroom and an owner who can afford to sack him.

Google something like "championship table since" and there is something thqt can do a table for a date range. We are p20 23 points 15th and 5 points clear of bottom 3 with that table I think.

Its currently tracking at 50ish points might not be enough. Probably need minimum of 2 wins possibly will need 3 wins and a draw or two. We're getting worse and can't see where a result is coming from. Or hope that millwall/birmingham and sheff weds implode too. Until we can get a couple of results we are in a relegation battle. Next six or so games its only the swansea game where we are probably a favourite, lose that and we probably need to pick up a surprise result to not either be in the bottom 3 or a single result from being in there. The only problem is that Manning does not have the demeanour of a man read for a scrap.

I think today is the day we were sucked into the relegation picture.

Absolute shambles. Luckily i couldn't make it there today, unluckily i watched the 2nd half and it was awful. He made a treble sib and just left everything set up as we were amd unsurprisingly bar about a 90 second spell we were completely contained. He is not building anything, unless a relegation side counts. He must have had the chance now for some grass sessions the last few weeks and this is what gets served up.

He made nicky hunt look reasonable. Could hardly kick a ball.

I would have thought the aim of the board/owners is to get promotion. The problem with the way that manning wants to play football is that you need probably need a minumum of two midfielders with massive quality in creativity and attacking play, and probably two forwards that can actually beat a man and run at players and take on shots and finish. All that will probably cost in excess of 20m in transfer fees alone, probably more. The likes of leicester leeds and southampton can play that way and be succesful in this division because they either already have these players or can afford to purchase them because they have the short term budget afforded to them to do so. Furthermore to then have any hope of staying up playing possession football in the prem you'd probably need to sign 11 players at 20m a pop or face coming straight back down with hardly any points just like burnley. It just doesn't seem like the man or formula to take us where we want to go with the situation and status we find ourselves in. At best I can see us spunking a relative amount of money on mediocre players to get us to an average finish and be stuck where we are, at worst we will continue the current trajectory and end up going down with a whimper next season. Manning in the main has served up a one dimensional turgid crap brand of football. I'm in the get rid camp, but not quite at the point where I feel the situation has got ridiculous and he just has to go. If we sleepwalk ourselves into a relgation scrap or if given a full pre season and a number of new signings and we still look and play how we are currently after 5 games or so then I'll be firmly shouting for him to go. I think he is out of his depth and one dimensional and taking us backwards, there is an ounce of hope that maybe he can turn us around with a couple of astute signings but that is hope more than expectation and not based on much evidence of what has served up for most of his time here so far.

Manning clearly isn't capable of working well with what he has got. Since manning came in against bottom 8 teams the results I think read p7 w0 d3 l4. Two of those three draws were the qpr and birmingham nil nils whoch were disgraceful performances plus huddersfield which was not great. Today was really poor with a near full strength team to pick from. We still possibly need to win another two games which I think we probably will but after the last two performances I do question whether we will.

If you can take anything from that half... the incredibly low bar that was our attacking performance against qpr, we have looked marginally better going forwards in this game, still pretty blunt though. Other than that I can't think of anything.

I think we might have done enough to stay up already, a win on Saturday against qpr and it would change to probably have done enough, and win the next 2 and its certainly done enough. Thats assuming we lost every game therafter, so after the last two results we are only looking up the table to see where our season takes us now. Its getting to the point now where you will have a team dropping out of having a realistic chance every couple of games on average. We're probably two "bad" results from dropping out of having any realistic chance at the moment. Its probably going to be in the range of 69 to 79 points required so for us between 25 to 35 more points, probably towards the mid to higher end of that scale. 9 of our 14 games are against bottom half teams, 6 of which are at home. Something like 6 wins, 2 draws and a defeat in those games would be 20 points. We have 3 away games against play off chasing teams in wba, sunderland and norwich, tough but something like a win loss and draw from those three is another 4 points. Then away at Ipswich and home to Leicester get a point from one of those, and that'd be 25 points to take us to the bottom end with a slim chance of it being enough. If we were to get the above set of results then it would be a strong finish but still leave us short in all liklihood. We probably need to have that run but have a near perfect return from the bottom half teams or pull out a couple of extra big results against the top teams on top to leave us with a good chance of making them.

Its difficult to pick faults there tonight. First half was pretty even both teams looked fairly good. 2nd half was immense, and was as good a performance as I can ever remember.

I thought the second half was rubbish. It's ok to sit a little deeper but we just had nothing in the second half going forwards moreso as the half went on. Conway isn't a striker who can play that isolated role well at all, the ball didn't stick and all he was good for was making sure that Middlesbrough had to keep some players back. We had absolutely nothing on the counter, Middlesbrough were able to sit in our half with no fear that we were going to be able to hit them with a quick counter. We were unable to retain the ball when we had it to relieve pressure. The second half tactics seemed to rely on us being able to made last ditch challenges for 45 minutes. There were probably enough chances for Middlesbrough to get something from the second half whereas we were beyond toothless for the whole of it. It wasn't disaterous, but it was not very good either. We just dont have the players to play the way we were set up in the second half. It feels like most of the replies are binary in that we won so everything was ok, but I think if you play the way we did 2nd half with a 2-0 lead and you'll probably end up dropping points in as many as you will hold on to a lead.

The direction of travel at the moment under manning is backwards. The football to my eye in the main has been mindnumbingly boring, combine that with it being mostly unsuccessful results wise then it doesn't really make for happy viewing. The Watford game was excellent but the six league games since then have been very poor, and to be honest most of the games preceding the Watford game were also pretty poor. Last night was another level and really should have been a drubbing. My patience is fast running out with manning, I think I've seen enough to think that we've got enough to get the 12 or so points to the end of the season to not get sucked into a relegation fight, but beyond that I've seen nothing that fills me with much hope. I could still be wrong on that front yet.

The criticism to a certain extent was fair. If you are playing a system and style that requires a marauding full back then he simply isn't up to it because he kills attacks, can't cross, can't beat a player with pace or skill. In games where we've been on the back foot and need to defend first he's looked great, such as Sunderland where he nullified Clarke. He's a great option for games where we need to defend well at the end if games etc. He looked good at centre back last season when he and pring played at either side of a back 3, so his performances the last couple of games are nothing new. It suits his game a lot better playing there, comfortable on the ball, good at defending, simple attacking options i.e. carrying the ball when it opens up or just playing simple passes to more creative players rather than being the creator and being a safe out ball when required. We've never seen him play at centre back as part of a pair so no idea if he can do that role. At the moment he is a good option at rcb, with a fully fit set of options he looks like he can compete there to either start or keep other centre backs honest with real challengers to start there and can also fill certain situations at full back. He is not the answer as full back playing a back four if we want to play front foot football for a season.

I thought on balance he was poor. The mcrorie foul was a joke, the one on pring 2nd half was an obvious foul not given compare that to the one against gardner hickman first half which was similar but nowhere near as bad. I thought the james booking was harsh. The Pring booking i'd like to see again as I thought that was harsh but I could be completely wrong. I was surprised that knight didn't get booked as he had one thing in his mind when he took the player down. The amount he'd let go with players taking free kicks and throws out of position to then go nuclear on cornick who ultimately took the throw a foot away from where he was lined up, what was the point of that. He also took an age to blow for fouls where there was nothing going on which I just found irritating. There were no big decisions that had to be made, but there was plenty for me to think that it certainly was not a masterclass by any stretch.

Maybe but that would mean left footed fontaine at right back or switching left footed mcallister to right back which would put limitations at both full back positions. Both also putting vasko at cb who was not the best player. Whilst clearly an alternative option and possibly could be argued it might have been better, it was certainly not an obviously better choice than putting marv in there and bringing lj on. Johnson was dealt a shitty hand by circumstance on the day and did about as well as could have been expected with the changes. We were already a goal down when the change was made reagardless.

Our form fell off a cliff at the end of that season when his boy got injured. If he had been able to play his boy in most of the last 10/12 games we probably wouldn't have had to make that change as we'd have gone up automatically. Also who should have gone to right back once Orr had to off instead of Marv? Hull also had a stroke of luck at their place earlier in the season with mccallister being sent off for two yellows for two fouls with a fair number of equal challenges by hull players going completely unpunished. We probably would have got more than a point there. I also thought we were faurly good value for the win at home to hull, it was two fairly decent teams going at it. But other than that I completely agree.

Calvert-Lewins red has been successfully overturned. So it wasn't a clear and abvious error then...

I've seen a replay and there was nothing in it. What irritated me at the time is I think the ref. booked the player who did it but for me it's either a straight red because you've seen someone stamp/kick a player on the ground or it's nothing at all so no card necessary. Issuing a yellow seemed odd. I may have missed the actual reason for the west ham player being booked at that time.

Also at least once with preston but i think twice.

Because the player was never an course to make big contact with the studs. It was controlled, with zero force and never in a million years a leg breaker. The guys not had to take any mitigating action to avoid the tackle. He's gone down trying to get the player sent off in which he has succeeded. Read the actual tackle not and the fact that there are some studs in the air in a slow motion still. Nobody is looking at that and wincing when they see the tackle being made. It is a subjective decision and not a clear and obvious error is the main point I am making, my secondary point is that I don't think its even a foul but I'm not really going argue the toss over it any more than that.

The biggest gripe with the whole piece last might is that it really is subjective, there is enough mitigating factors for me that I really don't think its a red. He is not endangering the player, actually reading what the other player is doing and where he was going to take the ball away from him, he's gone in with zeeo force and it is never going to do serious harm. I can accept that it can be interpreted differently but that is where it becomes a subjective decision because it seems like there's not many/any people saying its a stone wall red, it doesn't fit the threshold of a clear and obvious error. Dyche was spot on in his analysis when he pointed out that there was a foul on his player in the box, he acknowledged or implied it was soft on not a big shout but technically its a foul and if you are pulling up that red then you need to re-referree the entire game and every minor little touch or pull in the box simply must be a penalty or disallowed goal. VAR isn't for four purpose though as it doesn't allow to overturn two yellows being a red, I think that it was the Newcastle player who got sent off for not even a foul, how does that work in improving the game. In summary just get rid of VAR it doesn't improve the game at all, just makes it worse.