(h) v Middlesbrough League (Carabao) Cup 3rd Round - Tue 26 September 2023 7.45pm

Personally, Halliday.

 

We don't come up against teams who can pass and move like that in league 2, be lucky if most teams in our division can manage to string a couple of passes together. Players like Cook, Pattison and MacDonald are pretty much irreplaceable and need to be looked after.

 

Couldn't agree more. To start Cook was absolute lunacy.

 

In the scheme of things it was meaningless. A run in the cup as per 2013 is fantastic and that run gave us memories to last a lifetime. It also massively impacted our league form as that team should have finished much higher than 7th! That's forgotten about to a degree given that we went up through the play off lottery.
Given our early season injury problems, getting the team through unscathed last night is a plus for me. Saturday is the big game and 3 points means we've had a great week.

 

Yes probably agree with that Dave

 

No game is meaningless when paying fans turn up in a competitive game (Fiver or not)

 

I thought it was clear from my post I was specifically talking about the two home games, but 7 out of 9 would be a solid return over the next three league games. We’ve not looked like a team that can win 4 league games on the spin, so it would be a step in the right direction.

 

That’s the gulf we have to cross is huge Dave. It’s a chasm of epic proportions.

I dread to think what their wage bill is. Some of their guys will be on the same weekly wage and more, as ours are on a month.

 

He was going up to the Prem with Forest then a transfer deal fell through and left out of their squad. A player in no man’s land and he had to go abroad to get game time?

 

No its not what we want, but fans clapping are not going to send out any false messages were happy with what were seeing, now if that had been a league two game where we were very much under the cosh for the full 90 minutes I could understand but not an EFL Cup game.
After listening to his post match interview lets say I'm a little disappointed with his half time comments, for the life in me I could not see Phil Parkinson making that sort of comment.
I didn't see the full game out I went when the extra time went up so I'm not sure how many of those who stayed actually applauded the players.

 

Ah yes supporters you mean? Come on Vin, how many times have we seen the club, over the years, play higher division teams in the cup and get given a footballing lesson at Valley Parade. Dozens!!!!

How many times have we seen us beat these sides….Less than 5-10?
We need to get real here. The cup always brings up fairytale results but they are few and far between otherwise they wouldn’t be fairytales!

 

I remember just as many poor cup games if not more in the 40 odd years of supporting us. This idea you can just go blood and thunder is a bit of a myth, it's like the odd favourite 'just run harder'. You need a lot of things to go your way to beat a better sure, you need your best players fit and an excellent VP surface actually benefits teams with a better technical ability. Also need a team to miss chance after.chance like Arsenal did in league cup run.

 

Totally agree. Wigan away in the previous round was one of the biggest batterings I've seen us take.

How we got a draw I'll never know!

 

I think Hughes sees him there and I thought he did ok especially second half. But I think that would have been the perfect match for Smallwood however he seems out of favour at the moment

 

The thing is for all our faults we try to play football and you have better chance of beating good sides on a one off playing percentage football like Stevenage do

 

Most of those cup games we hung in on effort alone and used set pieces to our advantage. Something we don't really utilise under Hughes and is pretty much pivotal to beating a better technically gifted side.

 

Boring would just have passed round him.

 

I would imagine Boro would have been disappointed he wasn't playing
Farting about at the back against a high pressing speedy championship side
Recipe for disaster
Smallwoods in his best position (on the bench) !!!