RevidgeBlue

He was good in the first half of the season, less impressive the longer the season went on and fairly poor after lockdown imo.

Yep. And for the middle Bernie Slaven will be sat by the phone in case Armstrong is out for any length of time.

Yup, wonder if there's any more washed up ex Boro players or players Warnock has released doing the rounds. They're bound to be next in.

Absolute desperation stuff this - going back on bended knee to a 36 year old. The bottom of a very deep barrel being scraped. The last throe of a desperate manager completely out of ideas. (And contacts)

Yes, that was in the offing. Must not have had many decent offers in this Country.

Do you really think so, there's a couple of really good European commentators on Talksport Mark Langdon and Andy Brassell (sp) who could probably point you in the direction of the best up and coming European talent in 10 mins, ditto Tim Vickery in South America. Even if it wasn't those particular guys there must be reputable people about in the game who could point you in the right direction. I also reckon you or I could put a decent shortlist together in a couple of days from home and abroad if we had a few days spare to research it on the Internet, but it's not our job.

Should have gone Feb 19 for me, I'm not sure the job market is quite as bleak as you paint, Mccarthy is still available, Pearson and Pulis are also out of work and even though Hughes' stock has dropped somewhat I'm not sure why anyone would advocate sticking with Mowbray over rolling the dice on him. That's even before the countless hidden gems there must be out there like the bloke Reading unearthed.

Can we play all 14? We might be able to keep Boro down to a single goal with five defenders and two keepers strung out across the goal. Only one magic rule needed for the starting eleven. Evans and Gallagher nowhere near it. If Armstrong is unavailable I'd go with a front 3 of Dolan Brereton Elliot.

That's my main worry. For me Evans offers absolutely nothing and on Saturday's evidence I'm worried Trybull might turn out to be similar. You can barely afford one player in the side like that, let alone two. Mowbray should look at the line up that beat Wycombe then note he stuck with it and we put 4 past Derby away from home. That wasn't coincidental but he seems to be doing his usual tinkerman routine and drifting further and further away from that line up which worked.

Injuries are an inconvenience but no matter which eleven players are on the pitch we ought to be able to defend to a reasonable level commensurate with a team competing in the second tier of professional football in England. We have been very wasteful in front of goal at times as well but it's the defensive frailties that are the main problem, we'd have needed three to beat Swansea, four to beat Watford and five to beat Reading!

I never thought he was worth £8 - £10m anyway. I'd take Hanley when he was here over Lenihan every day of the week. Just hope DL can improve a bit if Ayala ever regains fitness.

Agreed. Looks to have bulked up considerably since he was originally here and it seems to have robbed him of his mobility. He just looks like a big useless lump now, at least when he was first here he looked a lot leaner and more athletic and able to make a bit of a nuisance of himself by running the channels.

What's the alternative then Gav? Stick with him indefinitely regardless of results because he's allegedly "a nice guy"? That's probably subjective anyway. I don't suppose certain players like Mulgrew, Nyambe, Davenport and Chapman would automatically agree.

"I must be dreaming." ? Connery is Bond for me. Or vice versa. He had the character just right with the mixture of charm and underlying ruthlessness that was apparent in Ian Fleming's books which were written in a completely different era. The rest were just playing at it for me although I'll give Daniel Craig his due, he's been very good and has got closer to the original than anyone else. He also rescued a franchise that was dying on it's arse after nonsense like invisible cars in Die another Day. RIP.

e.g. Gallagher

Remember a few weeks ago when some people were getting very cocky about the Greek keeper and saying it was a massive feather in the cap of the European scouting network? God knows what he's like if he's worse than Pears. Add that to Walton and Leutwiler I don't know how we manage to find them. You couldn't be that unlucky so many times if you were sticking a pin in!

Boro don't seem to be spanking people, I expect them to grind out a scrappy one goal victory, maybe we'll get some strokes of ill fortune in the game which Mowbray will be able latch on to and point at in conjunction with the injury list and on we limp regardless. You're right though, if we did get a real tubbing it might raise some eyebrows

Hypothetically it would be nice if Swag wasn't Mowbray's boss and he was right though. In an ideal world we'd make the change if we didn't get an absolute minimum of four points from the next two home games giving a new man a couple of weeks to bed in during the international break. If results continue to disappoint and the goals against continue to rain in, I'd say a change has to be made with thirty games to go to give a new man a realistic chance of salvaging the season. That would give him another seven games at the outside. In reality we know that won't happen but it's what should occur.

Do you want to invite the manager round to dinner or do you want us to get promoted? Incidentally I used to think that about Warnock as well but have warmed to him considerably since hearing him as a guest presenter on Talksport, completely straightforward, wears wears his heart on his sleeve and tells it how it is as opposed to most who dress things up and dance around a topic.

At any normal Club the powers that be would be sounding out potential availability of managers in case the next two home games go South as well. At our Club with the long distance owners and the manager's best mate as his boss I doubt they've even registered there's a potential problem.

Noticed that today when the camera panned onto the bench, the body language of all 3, Mowbray Venus and DJ was absolutely appalling. All 3 slumped in their seats with not a peep out of any of them. Johnson was slumped so far down in his seat he was almost horizontal.

.....in League 1.

Serious question, do we not have a young player in the u23's who is actually a LB rather than play another youngster barely out of the U23's who isn't a LB there?

I know we're not good defensively normally but that was some pub team style defending today even by our standards, very Coylesque, if we carry on like that a relegation scrap beckons. Lenihan and JRC were atrocious, Trybull will have to step up massively on that performance, on today's evidence he looks like a pointless crab very much in the Lowe/Evans mould. Brereton was back to his pre lock down self, Evans was his usual self (P4 L4?) and Armstrong was allowed to continue for the best part of an hour after seemingly feeling his hamstring. All in all a very depressing but fairly predictable afternoon.

Why waste another season?