* The Unofficial "Official" Boro v Birmingham City [03/24] Match-Day Thread *

Don’t think we will be troubling the playoffs based on that but at least we finally look defensively competent. We are doing the basics right, getting stuck in and at least giving ourselves a chance to win games.

I personally don’t think the back 3 can last forever, it’s a needs must thing where we had to change things while we looked so bad defensively. I think if we can get Hackney and Howson in midfield and Jones on the right then we could go back to the usual formation.

Mad to think if Carrick hadn’t persisted with Glover we would be in the playoffs now.
 
Not the best technical performance but excellent tactically and physically. Back to back away cleansheets is never to be sniffed at. Did Dieng have a save to make?

Dieng 6 - flapped at a cross didn’t have much else to do
McNair 7 - sokid
Rav 8 - star man
Clarke 7 - was hot and cold but was resiliant
Ayling 7.5 - really good for 70 blowing the last 10
Engel 6 - passing was poor but worked really hard
Howson 6 worked hard
O’Brien 7 showed a bit more quality than howson but worked as hard
Forss 5 - game passed him by
McGree 7 - great goal in a hot and cold performance
Latte lath 7 - worked hard was a menace, tired

Greenwood 6 - worked hard, rubbish free kick
Azaz 5 - didn’t really get into the game
 
Rough game with very little cohesion but who cares. Have we learnt to win ugly?

I have never seen Carrick's team try and turn a back line to have them playing towards their own goal before
 
You get games like that in any level of football. They’re fighting for their lives but we were rock solid throughout.

So proud of the boys tonight.

It’ll be a sad day when Paddy leaves the club. If I was Carrick I’d be sitting him down tomorrow and saying ‘if you stay, I’ll play you every week’.
 
It's really good to see us grinding out results. That's two clean sheets in a row now, when was the last time that happened?! Let's not get carried away with any playoff talk though, but I certainly wouldn't say we're out of it after these last few results. It's just so frustrating when you look at the points we've dropped and games we've lost. We could be comfortably 5th. But as the saying goes, if my grandmother had wheels.... you know the rest
 
I wouldn't slate them that's the same team three games in a row, tired legs and mentally fatigued but Carrick clearly didn't want to disrupt to much.

Great win all builds confidence and you cant win every game playing great and I actually enjoy watching us win ugly occasionally, shows a different side to our game!

UTB onto Saturday
 
Merlin said:
What a crap game 😳
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Haha. It really was dreadful to watch. Excellent result and top quality goal but other than that the quality from both sides was really poor but especially them. I didn't feel like there was any risk of us conceding because they were so bad and I'm never confident of us not conceding.
 
Isn't it great to play poor and get the three points!! Well played lads, these are the games we need to win!! All winning sides have games like this!!
 
BoroinSeattle said:
I still think not. It’s really six points with goal difference. We’d probably have to win 7 of the last 9.
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We've got some tough games coming up, but we tend to excel in those. Bigger issue is there are three sides ahead of us and I don't think we'll pick up 6 points more than all of those sides
 
I think it's also worth noting that he's named an unchanged team twice now and look where it's gotten us. Not tinkering with the team as he usually does has been such a positive. I'd play the exact same team on saturday against blackburn. International break up next so let's not change a winning team and hopefully we go into it with 4 wins on the bounce
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
Said it last week. We’ll finish 6th. Trust me.
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Still just an outside chance. 3 teams we need to overtake so, a 25% of each of us getting sixth if we were all on the same points…we’re not….so probably less than 20%, maybe 15% chance….still it’s a lot higher than a week ago.
 
TheYorkshireTerrier said:
**** me.

A win’s a win and that was a very important one.

But that was a poor performance, couldn’t get hold of the a ball in the second half against a crap team.

Engel and O’Brien not good enough in that second half, far too many losses of concentration.

That being said, thank god we have VDB, what a ridiculous player. Ayling also had a great game I thought. 3 wins out of 3 and back to back clean sheets away from home.
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Thats an interesting take, I thought Howson was poor tonight and made a couple of pretty big bloopers in the first half. In the second our midfield couldn't control the ball so we couldn't control the game against a pretty poor side. I thought Howson was the reason for our lack of control.

VDB wasn't as good as Clarke or McNair though all 3 had very good games.

According to FOTB which is solely stats based, Clarke got man of the match with 8.0 and Engel next best at 7.9. Not sure how accurate those ratings are as Forss was the lowest marked player at 6.1.
 
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