S-Clarke

Add him to the list of atrocious and unceccecary signings over the last so many windows. We really need to sort our shit out as these mistakes aren't going to be recoverable from without PL money. Our recruitment is bordering on criminal negligence. We even spent £10m at this level on an injured striker in August when we needed a striker, and he's still injured.

No chance that game will mean anything. Will be a dead rubber with everything decided before that. Leicester and Ipswich battling it out for 2nd may go down to the wire, but Leeds will have it wrapped up imo.

Cov's scouting in recent years has been absolutely faultless. Hamer, Gyökeres, Wright, Simms, Van Ewijk (someone I'd look to as a replacement for KWP), O'Hare, Sheaf etc. Absolutely epic recruitment. We can learn a lot from them.

But there's no point in looking at the games they'll drop points in if we also drop points on the same gameday. No one had Leicester and Leeds to drop points yesterday, so potentially we had some bonus ground to make up - but we fucked it and that is that. They'll probably drop a few points here and there in the run in, but inevitably so will we as we proved yesterday. We simply have too much to do, realistically we needed to win all 10 games and we've already failed at the first hurdle on that one. We can only get 100 points now I think, and the Top 2 are already on course to both hit 100+ points. It'll be interesting watching from afar to see how Leicester can recover though, how they've made that into a 3 horse race is beyond me.

They're top league professional footballers, if they let a little bit of crowd distraction throw them off course and lead them to forget how to defend then they shouldn't be playing football at this level. Not sure I buy it, as we had no control of that game in the 2nd half at all - even before all the stand stuff.

When the teams above us drop points we need to maximise how we capitalise, because we're already 10 points away from them and only have 9 games left - so gaining just 1 point is a mega fail. It's going to be near on impossible to get anywhere near the Top 2 now, this is why I hate games in hand because they create this weird limbo/illusion land where people assume we'll win the games in hand etc, then look where we'll be. I've been guilty of being drawn into that. The fact is as of this morning we are 8 points off of 3rd, 9 points off of 2nd, 10 points off of 1st. We have 9 games to go. It's not going to happen. We're finishing 4th. I've been looking forward to the final 10 games but it honestly feels like it's over before it even begun.

More frustration than anything for me, a case of 'what could have been' - these sides will wobble but not much....and when they do we need to avoid doing the same, otherwise nothing changes. But today we also slipped up so whatever they've done is pretty irrelevant really.

Not really sure I'd feel anything other than fucking frustration if we end today with both Leeds and Leicester losing their games.

Still waiting for those 5 Pledges.

Don't bother watching it back, it was a bit of a bore-fest for the most part. Yes, Che's misses were bad. He was in the 6 yard box on his own with just the keeper to beat with his first chance and missed. Armstrong also guilty of missing two efforts in a congested penalty area.

The goals and chances against have certainly flowed with Stephens back in the 11. I've always found him to be a decent last ditch defender, but the fact he's always last ditch is probably the most telling thing about his game. He recovered from that breakaway today only because their striker's touch was absolutely diabolical. I really think we blinked too soon to give him the captaincy, I think he's third choice CB - Bednarek and THB as the two is where we built our consistency, ever since we've broken that up the goals against have certainly flowed consistently. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that.

I don't think that's fair, you don't get to 84 points by getting loads of underserved points. They totally deserve to be where they are. We caught them back in the winter, but let them get away again through our incompetence - so full credit to them and they're in for an exciting last 6 weeks or so and we'll carry on watching afar whilst playing the ball between our back 4.

Of course the loan players are going to be better, most of the time they are proven PL players that we couldn't have afforded to buy outright anyway - so we've loaned them. THB, Downes, Fraser etc - PL players.

Not that we're in the debate anymore....but what the fuck have Leicester done??? The lead they had over Ipswich/Leeds etc was enormous, they were clear not just from 3rd but from 2nd. They're now 3rd with 7 games to go. I've never known a team at this level to bottle a gap that huge this late on. I think Leeds will now go onto win the league with games to spare, that last game against us is a nothing event now. 2nd will be a fight out between Leicester and Ipswich, at this stage it's hard to look beyond Ipswich as Leicester have just imploded at the wrong time. Norwich and WBA for 5th and 6th for me. Norwich are your typical play off winning team as they've come from no where in the 2nd half of the season to storm it. Leicester remaining in this league next year with their financial troubles is an absolute disaster for them.

It's nothing about style or tactics with Che, he's just a truly horrific finisher. Stick him in tandem with a finisher and let him do all the dirty work and it will be more fruitful, but if you're expecting him to score you the goals then you're in for a rude awakening. When we sold Ings the club hung their coat on Che, with the likes of Armstrong and Broja supporting him. It didn't even take much for Broja to out perform him and he wasn't even ours. What I want more than anything this summer is a proper number 9, a consistent finisher to play through the middle. I fully accept Adams will go (blessing) and so will Armstrong with just 1 year left, so it gives us a great opportunity to properly revamp that area. I just don't want to hear any nonsense in the summer about how Stewart is fitter than ever etc etc, we need to be aiming to replace him too - he is nothing more than a squad player in my eyes at this stage.

You can kind of predict it already. Che and Armstrong leaving in the summer, we're panicking as fans as no new number 9 seems to be coming into the door. The club remain calm and relaxed about the situation, only focused in buying better than they have, as they have confidence in Stewart who is already here etc. Come the end of the window, we don't sign a new number 9, all faith put into Stewart again and he gets injured in the first game after the window like you say. Our recruitment of strikers since the sale of Danny Ings has been an absolute disgrace. I hope I'm wrong with the above, but I've seen it all before.

But that would mean we'd have to play Leeds or Leicester in the playoffs at some stage, Ipswich in the playoffs is the better option in terms of pure 11 v 11 quality.

I don't really buy that, Fraser had a clear chance - should have scored, Armstrong had two efforts he needed a cleaner hit on - no idea how they both stayed out. Adams, I mean what can you say. You just have to score of those if you're a professional level player, 1 if you're having a bad day - but to miss both I just can't quite fathom. None of that is because of the style or patterns of play or tactics, we just never sorted out a proper number 9. The way we played enabled those opportunities for Adams, but he's just shit.

We've lost all of our momentum, they've still got some - albeit they are stuttering. Of the 3 top 3 sides we have to play I'd say they are one of the more beatable ones, but I'm sat here today and I don't think it really matters anymore. We needed a win today to go into that game on Monday with a chance to claw right back - now we're going there to just avoid them getting further away, all a bit naff and pointless now really.

It really is a crazy Top 3 this year, their form has set a bar. What's really, really frustrated me though is that we caught them (Ipswich especially), hunted them down all winter and hauled them in. We went on this 26 game unbeaten historical, never seen before run, which will now ultimately mean diddly squat and will be one of those pointless records we hold. ''How to go unbeaten for half a season and not achieve anything''. It seems as if we were fine playing catchup, but as soon as we were in the position of being chased we completely died a death. Our form since Feb has been atrocious and it's made that unbeaten run entirely null and void.

That's stretching it I don't know how I'd feel if Ipswich and Leeds drop points later, probably frustration more than anything because it won't mean anything given what we just did. Need to mentally prepare myself for the playoffs.

Definitely should have won it, but we were pretty sloppy I thought. Let them back into it so many times, very open on the break (as we have been all season tbf). We've won lots of games this season in the death, it feels like the inventible reverse is going to bite us in the arse in the coming weeks. Not that it really matters now!

It was how I feared, returned from a long break sluggish, slow and one-paced. We played within ourselves for most of that game. The subs made us worse, Brooks especially. Might be controversial as he is a good player and I like him individually, but I think he's made us so much worse as a team for some reason. He just doesn't fit, there was an example of him jumping with KWP at the same time etc. He's just totally unsettled the entire side. That one is on Adams though in the main. I still cannot fathom why PL clubs want him, he can't finish. He's a 2-5 goal a season PL player, 10-15 at best in the Champ. Today his finishing was just off the negative scale though. A really shit and depressing start to this 10 game run, in fact it's probably already over before it even began. I guess it's now just about preparing to get into the playoffs with the best form possible and watch Ipswich, Leicester and Leeds battle it out from afar. I think we'll end up stranded in 4th. Felt shit today so didn't go, seemingly made the right call.

If Leicester lose this then god knows where they go from here. I've never seen a team implode like they have.

They're a funny side are Boro. Capable of beating anyone on their day, but can quite as easily lose to Rotherham or Huddersfield. They have never really been in a position to get to the playoffs. They are what I fear we could be next year if we fail to make it this season. Boro were one of the leading sides last season, but were cherry picked in the summer and lost all their goals. (Archer/Akpom)