Ex Lion Tamer

I wonder if there's anything to be said about 1) the quality of fitness following Still's preseason and 2) the intensity the players are playing in the first half of games

You can say this of any manager/team: we may have done well against weaker teams but we will find it harder against the stronger teams.

Be specific about who we should have brought in. I was sceptical about hiring someone so unproven but also not enthused by any of the other names being put forward. In that context you might as well go for the guy who is winning almost every game (by wide margins a lot of the time)

You have to believe that a 32 year old manager in his first major job might be able to learn and improve their in game management

Now we have a manager who can get the team performing without a big target man, hopefully he can get a tune out of Cam. There's talent there

For years and years we've made the same mistake of thinking you don't have to spend more on the striking position than others

What makes it so hard is sometimes things go well for a caretaker but as soon as they become permanent manager the dynamic changes.

Unless the board are losing faith in Spors, in which case they may decide to take more control

It did say something that we played well when we had the motivation of playing against Liverpool

To be fair, there were A LOT of people on here who couldn't see that. He was getting slaughtered

Boro seem to have woken up. For all that we've played well, they've been pretty tepid today so far

😁 For the second championship season in a row, we've all been guilty of writing off Adam Armstrong. He'll bag 20 goals this season

Archer is our best striker and we should stick with him

Feels like this season's team is starting to come together

If he's bang on brand then they will only replace him with someone similar

We lost 5-0 to Sunderland two seasons ago and still turned it around under a manager that everyone now considers to be terrible. Pocchetino has been playing Downs for USA so he must see something in him?

I wasn't including everyone but yeah, could do with more goals up top. For comparison, two seasons ago - it's not actually that different if Archer equates to Armstrong and Azaz equates to Che, with Robinson adding more than any of wingers last time: Adam Armstrong Centre-Forward 21 Ché Adams Centre-Forward 15 Samuel Edozie Left Winger 6 Will Smallbone Central Midfield 6 Ryan Fraser Left Winger 6 Stuart Armstrong Central Midfield 5 Joe Aribo Central Midfield 4 Joe Rothwell Central Midfield 4 Kyle Walker-Peters Right-Back 3 Sékou Mara Centre-Forward 3 Carlos Alcaraz Central Midfield 3 Jan Bednarek Centre-Back 2 Taylor Harwood-Bellis Centre-Back 2 Flynn Downes Defensive Midfield 2 David Brooks Right Winger 2 Nathan Tella Right Winger 1

Two years ago my prediction for Adam Armstrong to score goals was specacularly correct (though the rest of my predictions were pretty poor). See you in a year's time when Archer has had a great season: Archer - 17 Azaz - 13 Robinson - 8 Downs - 6 Fellows - 5 Scienza - 5 Armstrong - 4 Stewart - 3 Fraser - 3 Matsuki - 2 (League goals only)

In his Middlesbrough season he was 21 years old and scoring more than a goal per game. That's an excellent rate for any striker, let alone a 21 year old

11 in 20 for Middlesbrough the last time he was in the Championship. 7 in 20 the previous season. The Premier League has proven to be a step too far for him but his finishing looks good at this level

How did he do today? I've only seen the highlights but I thought his goal was very sharp play, real fox in the box stuff. And his finish against Norwich was top draw. Could he be the goalscorer we are looking for?

The free kick was on the side that the GK would normally leave to the wall, so I'm not sure he should be expected to save it. However, it did seem like he should have got closer to it. It was almost like he misjudged the height.

Seems like we used him quite effectively to pressure West Brom into accepting a low bid

I do like the age profile of Jander and Fellows. Young but not too young

How was my prediction? Actually too pessimistic in the end? 😀