The thing is we are not playing good football. When Farke’s teams were performing badly early in the season, at least it could be said the football was good and we deserved more. Yes a few decisions went against us, but Middlesbrough spurned some golden chances (almost all created by shoddy defending). You choose more physical players and a bruising manager like Manning in order to improve defensively. Our defence now looks worse (just as liable to make shocking decision, but less mobile and worse at keeping the ball) and our offence is entirely reliant on the best striker in the league - which even then is limited to lobbying it long to him.
There is little to argue against above but as the age old saying goes “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. We are playing a completely different formation form last season and half the team were new signings today. Let’s give it a chance to develop, see how we are looking after 10 games. There were a few occasions today where we put some nice build up play together but then the final pass was wrong. Mannings sides have typically started off slow, but built as they get into the season - let’s hope that’s the case here. This is a decent Boro side who have had little player turnover and are well drilled in their system, was always going to be a tough ask today, although we were very much our worst enemy with the sloppiness in the first half and then going down to 10men.
I get that, I’m just saying the odds are against. I think I can see where this most likely ends up. He’s basically guaranteed to be manager until December, the question for me is whether the new owners will be ruthless at that point if results are still sour
I think you've lost the plot if you think our defence looks worse than last year. Darling is looking like a great signing and the keeper is definately an up grade on Gunn. We've been in every game we've played this season even today when we went down to 10 men. If anything it's our central midfielders poor passing that is exposing us at the back. Wright, Marcondis & Crnac in particular look poor. We look a threat going forward, particularly when we go wide or play long cross field balls and we also spurned some great chances. Probably the worst was by Sergeant failing to get on the end of a Stacey cross. No doubt the'll be some on here that thought the games wasn't entertaining.
Can't believe we are even talking about sacking Manning this early in the season. Next minute we'll be saying we don't want to be a Watford.
Reasons to be positive: Diallo looked a threat again, we won the second half though down to 10 men , McLean came on and looked good and got an assist (7 rating for 31 minutes), Kvistgaarden made a difference again (6.4 in 18 minutes) and Boro have conceded a goal and could have been pegged back at the end. Yes, we had to gamble against their counterattacks but that was right IMO. It's far too early to panic. We missed Núñez today (until McLean came on) and Forson could have made a difference if he wasn't injured. I disagree that we defended badly - we were on top until two individual mistakes let in the goals. New players are still adjusting and there's potential there and there's nothing wrong with the team spirit.
Not doing enough in training so far,. To me, the key player to come is Kvistgaarden - he could make a big difference once match fit.
