Probably worth caveating on Davis, he’s been poor defensively but looks by far our best attacking player in Middlesbrough’s final third.
Fraid our defense has been frail and tbh Palmer kept us in the game after a good opening spell and several chances go begging. As Nuggets says, KM to earn his wages now.
And time for another pen taker. Hirst has missed several if I'm not mistaken. Boro rallied immediately after the save and they were spurred on. The crowd sense more goals after a drought for weeks. Gaffer will take a draw now.
Get Cajuste, Egeli, Szmodics, and Hirst off for Nunez, Clarke, Akpom, and Azon. But do it now Kieran and not in the 73rd effing minute!
Well worked goal there. We have seemed to significantly improved the quality of our set pieces in recent weeks. Feels like we’ve got a bit of momentum now. Hopefully can get something from this match.
Changes too late Zero fecking urgency, injury time and we are passing the ball around like we are wasting time. Hirst shot to bits Szmodiks shot to bits Wally matches his bloody name Nuñez has to start Azon has to start Boro poor, Ipswich poorer!!
Ultimately, a poor performance. Too slow, too complacent, and too many silly errors. A shame after the positive last month. Away form might becoming a concern, no win yet. Two big home games against Charlton and West Brom to come. Hopefully Jack Clarke and Azon are given a start because Egeli and Hirst aren’t doing it for me.
Central defence is not right. Still think Burgess is better than either Kipre or Greaves. Hirst is right out of form, not holding up the ball as he once did and penalty miss on top. Mcateer looks a waste of money (thought he would start tonight as defensively better but no). Still don’t get why we got rid of Ogbene. Think we’ll probably beat Charlton on Tuesday but glaring issues away from home - needs to be sorted soon or play offs at best for us
Not an awful result against a good team but a terrible performance. We look like a bunch of strangers completely different to last time we were in the division
The gaffers take. Oddly it was a game we could have won in a critical 5 mins before half time. But overall, no excuses, the performance was well below what we needed. We need another penalty taker for sure. Hirst doesnt inspire confidence any more sadly. And what a ridiculous own goal to give away. In fact we gave the ball away to easily gifting so many chances and possession in our own half. Tonight we were as open & loose in central midfield as I can remember in many years. We were lucky that Palmer produced a string of superb saves, was it 4 or 5 in a row? No team hoping for promotion can defend like that in any game. We were very disorganised. Kipre had a poor game, Philogene and Walle Egeli were way off it. Davis was as Nuggets says our best attacker and provider but never a defender. Clueless. We are a long way from the finished article and maybe KM jinxed it by saying so before the game, we have a long way to go in developing the team. Hardly a ringing endorsement for the players chosen to play. Bring back Chappers & Morsy, and bring back that sense of urgency, intensity & cohesion.
McKenna is an outstanding young manager but he's not a tactical genius even in the double promotion winning team it wasn't about in game tactics it was about the long term process. It took time for him to build that double winning promotion team. When he first came in he made us defensively solid, the next season we continued with that solidarity at the back and started dominating the midfield but looked a bit toothless uptop sometimes, it was very laboured until, Hirst, Broadhead and Luongo came in. With this new team I feel like hes tried to continue the same style of football with a bunch of new players when maybe there should be a bit of the solidarity of when he first came in. McKenna likes to pass it out from the back which I think many of us have been a big advocate of but this season I've seen us lose the ball at the back and in midfield more than McKenna's entire time in charge, it doesnt appear to be working. It used to frustrate me when commentators would say why are ipswich passing it out from the back soo much but we rarely lost chances to it, it was mainly being too open. Now we have the issue of losing the ball and being too open. It's hardly suprising, I've felt we've been too open for years but it worked and was that risk vs reward. However we've effectively replaced Luogo with an attack minded midfielder and Burns who did alot of defensive work with a forward. We were open before but now we've got barely any players who are defense minded in the team and Matusiwa is suspended for the next game...who is going to replace him? We've got no defensive midfielders. Lets get it back to basics and maybe tweak things to suit the personnel rather than trying to play the way we did a couple of seasons ago, just because we have technically better players doesnt mean they can play in the same way. Hardly surprising some of the promotion winning team left as they knew they could play this system better. I haven't seen a good 90 minutes from us probably since the Huddersfield game, we've had some good results but we really need to start seeing some consistency first and in the basics. I'd be tempted to play 3 in midfield and drop the 10 as its not being really effective at the moment.
