English players have played a big part in Middlesbrough's history, with no less than 10 English players winning the club's Player of the Year in the last 18! Ben Gibson, George Friend (twice), Stewart Downing and Jonathan Woodgate all make that list!
August 2019
Before the season officially kicked off, it was time to have a look at the season preview. No surprise that the bookies have us as one of the favourites to go straight back down, but at least they don't think we are quite as bad as Cardiff and Brentford!
Our first game against one of the big six ends in defeat but we did ourselves justice away at Spurs and can take hope from this performance that we won't be battered by the big teams this year!
English Premier Division Matchday 3 - Chelsea (Home) Won 2-1
Get in there! What a result that was! David Brooks proving he was worth every penny of that £27 million I paid with a fantastic curling strike from outside the box to give us the lead in this game!
Carabao Cup 2nd Round - Nottingham Forest (Away) Won 2-0
Of all the competitions we play in this year, this is currently being treated as least important, so some squad rotation was implemented with a view that I am willing to sacrifice this cup for Premier League survival. However, the changes didn't effect the side too much and we still cruised to a pretty comfortable 2-0 win over our Championship opponents.
English Premier Division Matchday 4 - Bournemouth (Away) Lost 3-1
A solid enough start sees us bang in mid table with a couple of early wins to our name! That result over Chelsea could end up being the best result of our entire season, but most importantly we've put out a statement to the rest of the league that won't just walk all over us and we are here to be taken seriously.
Mark Schwarzer made a total of 367 appearances between the sticks for Middlesbrough during a 9 year spell with the club! When he played in Middlesbrough's 1-0 win over Portsmouth in December 2007, he became the Premier League's longest serving foreigner at one club, surpassing Dennis Bergkamp's record of 315 matches.
September 2019
Awards
Young Marcus Tavernier continues making a name for himself by winning the first Young Player of the Month award in the Premier League for August!
Just after I said last month that we'd proved nobody will walk all over us, Leicester go and thump us! It didn't help that Jenko went off injured early on and I had to play a left back at right back for the rest of the game...4 of their 6 goals came from the left side!! The only plus for us today was Tavernier getting another 2 goals and he has taken to the Premier League like a duck to water!
English Premier Division Matchday 6 - Newcastle United (Away) Drew 1-1
My first Tyne-Tees derby ends in a draw, so neither set of fans take the bragging rights. Darron Randolph was unlucky with the own goal as the ball bounced off the post and hit him before going in!
Carabao Cup 3rd Round - Bristol Rovers (Away) Won 4-1
Six changes were made to the lineup from the Newcastle game as I rotated the squad again for the Carabao Cup, but again it didn't effect the lads and the players that came in did well as we romped to a comfortable win! At what point do I take this competition seriously?
English Premier Division Matchday 7 - Brighton & Hove Albion (Home) Won 5-3
In attack we were awesome, in defence we were awful! We very nearly let a 4-1 lead slip and when they got it back to 4-3 I feared the worst. However, it was us that then got the next goal to seal a massive win at the end of the month! Jordan Ayew with the pick of the goals as he scored a cheeky lob over the onrushing keeper!
Despite that freak result against Leicester, we recovered quickly and picked up another 4 points in the league and progressed in the cup again, so it has to be seen as a decent month! We are struggling a bit defensively, but luckily we aren't having any trouble scoring goals at present which is cancelling out the poor defending! Next month will see us play Man City and Liverpool, which makes the Cardiff game afterwards a must win for us!
Tony Mowbray played nearly 350 games for Middlesbrough during a 9 year spell with the club, before later going on to manage the team between 2010-2013. In his first season in charge he lifted the club from 22nd to finish 12th in the Championship and followed that up with a 7th placed finish the following year!
October 2019
Awards
Marcus Tavernier picks up the Young Player of the Month (September) for the 2nd time in a row!
What a ******* result that was!!! We can add the scalp of Manchester City to our list this season along with Chelsea!!! Obviously, we were under the kosh for long periods, but we defended brilliantly (obviously, as I slated our defending in my manager's diary last month) and took our chances really well when they came!
English Premier Division Matchday 9 - Liverpool (Home) Lost 3-2
Again we gave a good account of ourselves against one of the best teams in the league and really didn't deserve to be 3-0 down going into the final few minutes. Jordan Ayew scored a couple in the dying minutes to give us a much more respectable and deserved scoreline!
English Premier Division Matchday 10 - Cardiff City (Away) Won 3-0
It's great beating teams like Man City and Chelsea, but these are the games we have to win this season in this league....and we did in pretty good style, keeping our first clean sheet in the Premier League this year too!
Carabao Cup 4th Round - West Bromwich Albion (Home) Drew 1-1(Lost 5-4 on penalties)
I've said from the start I wasn't taking the competition seriously, but I still can't help but feel a bit ****** we've gone out here...maybe it's because we lost on pens that it hurts a bit...I mean, nobody likes to lose on pens!
Some really good performances at the back from my centre back this month. Flint seems to be doing OK this year which is great, as I was a little worried he might be out of his depth at this level if I'm honest.
Other News
Over the next 12 months, I'll be studying for my Continental A License which should help me move on to bigger and better things in the future!
Going to The Etihad this month and winning was an amazing experience for the whole team and picking up another 3 points against Cardiff was crucial as we move into the top 8 and at this early stage, it looks like relegation battles won't be an issue for us this year. Hopefully I've not spoken too soon!
Nicknamed 'The Golden Boy' because of his blonde hair, Wilf Mannion is a Boro legend with over 350 senior appearances for the club! Playing as an inside forward, he scored 110 goals, between 1936 and 1954, and represented England 26 times, scoring 11 goals for the national side. Mannion also fought for his country in France and Italy during World War II.
November 2019
English Premier Division Matchday 11 - Arsenal (Home) Lost 2-0
The Gooners were just too strong for us today. They haven't lost a game yet this season and it's easy to see why as they look a solid outfit who are very hard to break down...proven by the fact they've only conceded 5 goals so far!
English Premier Division Matchday 12 - Fulham (Away) Drew 1-1
If we thought we'd made a good start back in the Prem, then Villa have made an amazing one as they sat in 8th coming into this game. Just as we'd expected, they proved to be tough opposition and held us to a draw at home.
English Premier Division Matchday 14 - Crystal Palace (Away) Lost 3-0
You've got to question just how bad your defence has been when you concede 8 goals in 4 games and your goalkeeper still maintains this sort of consistency in his performances...Randolph wins the Player of the Month simply for being the best of a very bad bunch over the past few games.
Other News
Britt Assombalonga picked up an injury in the Arsenal game that will keep him out for up to 4 weeks.
Well this month has been nothing short of terrible and 2 points taken from a possible 12 is relegation candidate form! However, there's no need for us to panic just yet with 12 points seperating us and the bottom 3 and we'll look to get back on track in December, which will be a busy month for us with 7 league games scheduled!
Dear oh dear...that 2nd half performance was the worst I've seen under my management so far. After half time, we had no fight, no passion, no drive, no nothing!! The boys were told in no uncertain terms how disgraceful they were and were ordered into training the next morning as punishment!
English Premier Division Matchday 16 - Wolverhampton Wanderers (Away) Lost 2-1
A much better performance from the lads, but unfortunately we were still on the end of another defeat! We've really got to stop this rut as soon as possible as we continue to slip down the table with every loss.
English Premier Division Matchday 17 - Brentford (Away) Won 2-0
This was exactly the kind of game we needed to end our losing run and our task was made even easier when Brentford went down to 10 men inside the first 5 minutes! Good to get back to winning ways and hopefully we can kick on from here!
English Premier Division Matchday 18 - Watford (Away) Won 2-1
Another massive 3 points away at Watford made it back to back wins for the first time in a while! We were 2nd best for large parts of the game, but Watford weren't very clinical in front of goal and we punished them by taking our own chances very well! David Brooks is looking like a great signing, even at nearly £30 million!!
English Premier Division Matchday 19 - Everton (Away) Won 4-2
Three wins on the bounce and this was our most impressive performance for a while! 2-1 down with half an hour remaining and it looked like we had it all to do, but the boys rallied really well and we produced a sensational final 30 minutes scoring 3 goals to take all 3 points!
English Premier Division Matchday 20 - Manchester United (Home) Lost 2-1
For a minute it looked like we was going to add another major scalp to this season's collection when Britt put us 1-0 up completely against the run of play. But United came on strong after that and with increased pressure and immense quality in their attack, they overran us a bit in the final 20 minutes and grabbed the win in the end.
English Premier Division Matchday 21 - Tottenham Hotspur (Home) Won 3-0
Spurs are having a dreadful season and find themselves well down the table closer to the bottom of the division than the top! And we heaped the misery on them here with a surprisingly comfortable victory...their new manager, Rafa Benitez, definitely looks to have his work cut out there!
Steve Gibson must be pleased with the work I'm doing at the club as he hands me a new 3 year contract, doubling my wages in the process! I'm now the envy of the other pros as Lampard, Gerrard and Terry still dwell on their sub £25k salaries!
We picked up this month where we left off November with a couple of defeats, but the lads rallied round and after a team meeting to boost their morale, we quickly strung together 3 wins which got us back on track. Finishing the month with an excellent win over Tottenham was definitely the highlight and we sit 10th in the division going into the New Year. Relegation looks like something we won't have to worry about this season, with 4 teams at the bottom well adrift of the pack and really struggling. What remains to be seen is if we can finish the season in the top half which would be a fantastic achievement, or whether we'll just see our an average campaign and finish in mid table (which will still be seen as a success).
Jim Platt is a goalkeeper who played nearly 500 games for Middlesbrough between 1971-1983. He also won 23 caps for Northern Ireland, although it is widely thought that he would have won a lot more if it wasn't for the presence of one of the all time goalkeeping greats in Pat Jennings!
January 2020
Awards
Marcus Tavernier picks up his 3rd Young Player of the Month award of the season!
Incoming Transfer (One For The Future); Joe Gelhardt joins the club for just over half a million pounds from Wigan. The 17 year old has been dubbed as the new Michael Owen by the media and if that turns out to be the case and he reaches that potential, then £500k could be a steal! We'll immediately send the youngster back out on loan for the rest of the season in the hope he can get some first team football under his belt!
Outgoing Loan; As mentioned above, Joe Gelhardt was immediately made available for loan and joins League One outfit, Blackpool, where he should get plenty of game time!
Youngsters Nathan Wood and Andrei Ciucur came into the team for rare starts due to a bit of tiredness amongst the squad and they both did well on our way to a 2-1 win over the Championship side as we progress to the next round.
The win over Southampton set up a Tyne-Tees Derby in the next round against Newcastle.
Slightly disappointed that we couldn't capitalise with the extra man in the final 20 minutes or so, but happy to take a point when we were staring defeat in the face until Britt's equalizer right at the death!
FA Cup 4th Round - Newcastle United (Home) Won 3-0
The bragging rights belong to the Boro fans as we overcome one of our arch rivals in the FA Cup! We were fantastic from start to finish and the 3-0 scorleine didn't flatter us at all! Marcus Tavernier is quickly becoming one of the hottest properties in English football!
English Premier Division Matchday 24 - Leicester City (Away) Lost 3-2
We were done over by technology today...VAR first awarded them a penalty that the ref wasn't going to give and then their 3rd goal was clearly offside but VAR wasn't even called in to review it! I'm not really one for excuses, but today I'm making an exception.
After beating Southampton and Newcastle in the FA Cup this month, we'll invite Nottingham Forest to The Riverside next month for the 5th round of the competition.
Good progress in the FA Cup has been the highlight this month, whilst our league form left a bit to be desired. We are miles away from the relegation spots though and I really can't see us going down now, so the aim now will be to finish as high as we possibly can with our target already all but achieved!
Wilf Gillow is Middlesbrough's longest serving manager, having been in charge at the club for a 10 year period between 1934 and 1944. He managed the club to 236 games during this time, winning 92 of them!
February 2020
English Premier Division Matchday 25 - Newcastle United (Home) Won 2-1
We came into this derby with the psychological edge after beating Newcastle in the FA Cup last month, but going into the last 10 minutes, we looked like we were going to suffer defeat. That was, until Jordan Ayew and Marvin Johnson stepped up with late goals to ****** victory from our rivals!
English Premier Division Matchday 26 - Brighton & Hove Albion (Away) Won 3-2
After going 2-0 up, it was disappointing to find ourselves back at 2-2 going into the final minutes of the game, but then another late goal snatched victory again, this time from Johnny Howson! That's two wins in a row that we've taken in injury time which shows great determination from my lads right to the final whistle!
FA Cup 5th Round - Nottingham Forest (Home) Won 3-1
After completing the double of Man City, Liverpool complete the double over us. No complaints really...they are just much better than us at this stage!
Ayew was brought in this year with a view that if he could get me 10 league goals to keep us up I'd have been happy. He sits on 12 in the Premiership already and had a great month here scoring 4 in 5 games.
Other News
Championship leaders, Blackburn Rovers, will be our next opponents in the FA Cup next month.
If anyone deserves a new contract this year, it's young Marcus Tavernier and I'm delighted that he's committed himself to the club for another 3 years!
It's been a fantastic month, winning 3 of our 4 league games and progressing in the FA Cup! The Liverpool result can easily be forgiven, and the wins of Man City and Newcastle are massive for our fans! We've now reached the 40 point mark that we aimed for at the start of the season with 10 games still remaining which is a wonderful achievement and relegation is something we definitely don't need to worry about this year! Am I right to feel slightly aggrieved that no bigger clubs have come sniffing around my services yet (not that I'm particularly looking to move on)?!
Traditionally, supporters of Middlesbrough FC come from Middlesbrough itself or the immediate area. The club have one of the highest proportions in the UK of locally born season ticket holders at 80%. They also have one of the highest proportions of female fans at 20%.
March 2020
English Premier Division Matchday 29 - Cardiff City (Home) Won 3-2
Cardiff have only won 1 game all season, so I'd have been disappointed if we didn't win here, but we made our task a lot harder having to play with 10 men for an hour after George Friend's straight red card! Still, we got the job done and picked up a crucial 3 points before we play the Arsenal.
English Premier Division Matchday 30 - Arsenal (Away) Lost 3-0
Hard to know how to feel about this one...taking a point against a relegation threatened side is not good enough, however we were staring defeat in the face with only injury time remaining and managed to salvage a draw with two late crackers from Tom Krauss!
FA Cup Quarter Final - Blackburn Rovers (Home) Won 3-2 (AET)
How the **** we didn't win this game by 3 or 4 goals I'll never know! We had so many chances (good ones too) but missed a **** load! We did take 3 though, which was enough to win after extra time and progress to the semis!
English Premier Division Matchday 32 - Aston Villa (Away) Won 3-2
Villa are having it off this season and find themselves in 4th spot with only a few games to go...the bastards have totally stolen the spotlight from our great season back in the top flight! But we did manage to **** on their parade a little by beating them here...even if they were the better side on the day!
English Premier Division Matchday 33 - Crystal Palace (Home) Won 3-0
With Palace fighting for their lives to stay in the division, this was a potential banana skin for us. But we kept our professionalism and recorded a comfortable home win that was never really in doubt!
The 18 year old German has had a run in the team of late and has proven himself worthy even at this level! He's had a good month with a couple of goals and some decent performances!
Other News
The job at Atletico Madrid came up as Diego Simeone moved to Manchester City. I thought it might be a bit out of my reach at this point, but threw my hat in the ring anyway. However, it seems I missed the boat and by the time my CV was in, they'd already completed the process! It was Pep Guardiola that got the job!
We play Liverpool at Wembley in the semi final of the FA Cup next month! We've been beaten 3-2 and 3-0 by them in the league this season, so will have to be at our absolute best to get to the final.
Gutted...Marcus Tavernier picks up an injury after the Blackburn which will keep him out for up to a month, meaning he'll miss the FA Cup semi as well!
The Chelsea job came up and I thought it would really rub John Terry's and Frank Lampard's noses in it if I bagged that one ahead of them....so off my CV went!
But apparently my reputation isn't quite where it needs to be to bag such a high profile job and I don't even make the shortlist for the Chelsea job! Marcelo Bielsa was the man who got the job!
Another really good month with the defeat to Arsenal the only low point. We're up to 8th in the league and have given ourselves an outside chance at making the European qualification places...although it is a very outside chance. We have an FA Cup semi final day out at Wembley to look forward to next month, my second trip to the national stadium in just 16 months of being at the club! Although the odds are against us, we'll do our best to give Liverpool a game and who knows...anything can happen in a one off game.
David Armstrong played more than 350 games for Middlesbrough during a ten year period at the club throughout the 1970s. He played under manager, Jack Charlton and won the 2nd Division under his leadership. Armstrong was noted for his remarkable durability and for many years he was ever present as the club's number 11. He was awarded a testamonial with the club at the young age of only 25! Armstrong holds the club's record for the most consecutive appearances at 358...pretty incredible really!!
It was a bit gutting that on the biggest stage, their first goal came from a bit of a blunder as Darron Randolph fumbled Saido Mane's long shot to give Keita a tap in! Mane then added a 2nd late on when we were pushing forward for an equalizer. A decent effort from my lads, but on the day Liverpool were too good...especially defensively as we really struggled to break them down!
English Premier Division Matchday 34 - West Ham United (Away) Lost 3-2
Now I made the decision to bring George Saville back into the side with a point to prove against his old team, and what a decision it turned out to be as he banged in 2 goals! However, I'm gutted not to have got the win here against Wolves who turned up extremely negative playing with a back 5 and 2 DMs....if that's not playing for a draw I don't know what is!
English Premier Division Matchday 36 - Brentford (Home) Lost 3-1
It seems that when everyone plays **** all month, the only player that has any level of consistency about them is the keeper! And it makes me wonder just how **** our defence is when the keeper can maintain decent match ratings despite conceding 10 goals in 4 games!
Other News
The chairman will be pleased...we've made some serious profit over the last year!
A really poor month! Not only did we crash out of the FA Cup (no shame in that I admit), but we suffered some terrible results against mediocre opposition in the league! It's almost like the players have given up on the season now that we've reached 50 points and don't really have anything to play for (we're not going down but we're not making European qualification either). It's a bit of a disappointing attitude from the lads if that is the case, but it does seem like we'll just get through our last couple of games next month and look ahead to next season now!
Bryan Robson managed Middlesbrough for a period of 7 years, the first 3 of which were as a player/manager (although he only played himself 28 times across 3 seasons). He won the Division One title in his first season in charge winning promotion to the Premier League. He made a number of high profile signings including Nick Barmby, Juninho and Branco. In the 1996/97 season, Robson also led The Boro to both domestic cup finals but they lost both!
May 2020
English Premier Division Matchday 37 - Manchester United (Away) Lost 3-1
United ran us ragged in the first half here and it looked like it could be an embarrassing scoreline at 3-0 down at half time. However, the boys came out with much more gusto and determination in the 2nd half and we won the second half 1-0 to make the scoreline a bit more respectable.
English Premier Division Matchday 38 - Everton (Home) Won 5-1
Although it doesn't have any real impact on our season outcome, it's nice to finish the campaign with a big home win! I was pleased to see Tavernier finish off with a couple of goals after a truly wonderful season in the Prem for the young man! Is it obvious he is quickly becoming my favourite player at the club?!
It's been a fantastic first season in the Premier League with a top half finish achieved with that win against Everton on the final day. We played some exciting football this year and scored lots of goals for a newly promoted side, but we were exposed at the back and suffered some heavy defeats this year, some of which were embarrassing for our fans to take! Still, this is more than I could have hoped for at the start of the season when I was gearing up for a relegation scrap and it can only do wonders for my reputation as a manager. Having applied for jobs at Atletico Madrid and Chelsea in recent months shows I'm ambitious and ready to step up, but only time will tell if any of the bigger clubs come calling for my services just yet!
Record signing, David Brooks, easily wins the fan's player of the year award and I have to say I completely agree that he and Tavernier should be top 2! It was a clean sweep for Brooks as he took signing of the season and young player of the season as well! I think a lot of people will have had raised eyebrows when I signed him last Summer for £27 million, but hopefully he has now justified it for me!
The season review outlines that it was a good season for us and we exceeded everyone's expectations. The league standings throughout the year show that we were never a part of the relegation battle!
The board a pretty happy with what I'm doing at the club and I should think so as well! Although they do seem to have a bit of an issue with the tactics I like to play!
The commercial summary shows everything on the up apart from sponsorship which was only very slightly on the decline! The thing that is slightly disappointing is that we only sold 16,000 shirts this season....considering we pull in up to 34,000 fans for a home game this seems quite low!
Looking at the squad stats, the thing that sticks out immediately is how well all of our attackers did this season with Assombalonga, Ayew, Tavernier and Brooks all managing between 11 and 19 goals! Tavernier also finished with the highest amount of assists (10)! Eight players finished the season with average ratings above 7, which is the benchmark I want to see. The defence is clearly the area of the side that needs strengthening, with keeper Darren Randolph conceding a whopping 86 goals this season!
Frank Lampard was sacked by Derby in November and hasn't taken another job since. Joey Barton also remains unemployed after not working all year, whilst Thierry Henry and Steven Gerrard took new roles in France and England.
Incoming Transfer (First Teamer); I have forked out £21 million to bring centre back, Lewis Dunk, to the club from Brighton. We will pay £13.5 million up front and the other £8 million over the next 2 years. Dunk is an English defender who had a great season for Brighton last year, scoring an average rating of 7.03 across 32 games! He immediately becomes our best option at centre back and will go straight into the starting lineup! Lewis has signed a 4 year contract on £67k per week!
Incoming Transfer (First Teamer); After adding a centre back to the ranks, I turned my attention to available players to bolster our attack and noticed that Xherdan Shaqiri was transfer listed by Liverpool. A top class player who would definitely add something to our team, it was a no brainer to grab him for a cut price £11.75 million and he could easily turn out to be the bargain of the season of all the Premier League clubs transfer business. He signs a 4 year deal on £105k per week, making him the highest earner at the club!
Incoming Transfer (First Teamer); Another bargain in my opinion as Welsh full back, Ben Davies, joins the club from Spurs for a measley £6.75 million! He will go straight into the first team and is an excellent addition to the team! It's also great to bring another Welsh national into the team to pair up with David Brooks! Davies signs a 4 year deal worth £85k per week!
I should point out that to make these moves happen, I have had a play around with the transfer/wage budgets freeing up the money for the player's wages by reducing my transfer kitty! At this point I now have a wage budget of £1.15 million and am spending £1.14 million and I have £6.5 million left in transfer funds!
Other News
Marcus Tavernier picked up the Young Player of the Month award for May! That's the 4th time he's won it this season!
Outgoing Transfer; I tried to out Martin Braithwaite last Summer but could only get him out on loan. However, this season I've been successful in moving him on and picked up a decent £7 million fee from Bologna as he moves to Italy, taking a good £54k off the wage bill in the process.
Outgoing Transfer; Another player I was trying to offload last Summer was Paddy McNair and he has also left this year. He joins Alaves in Spain for just over £3 million.
Outgoing Transfer; Ashley Fletcher hardly played for us at all last season, so I was happy to move him on for the good of his career. We pick up £250k for his move to Sheffield Wednesday.
Outgoing Loan; Preston have taken our young prospect, Joe Gelhardt, on loan for the season. I'm interested to see how he gets on, considering he is touted by the media as the next Michael Owen.
Incoming Transfer (Squad Player); I was in desperate need of another wide attacking player, but didn't have the budget to break the bank. Millwall's Aiden O'Brien is a player I like and is very low risk for us as we only paid £2.5 million to secure his signature. He's not likely to play a large amount of games (unless he impresses when he gets his chances), but will act as a great squad rotation player. Aiden signs a 3 year contract on £13.5k per week.
Well, that came out of nowhere...I've been offered the England job on £73k per week!! International management is something I'd like to explore later on in my career, but right now it's not for me.
Outgoing Transfer (Record Sale); I only signed Roberto Gagliardini last Summer for £4.5 million, but he has left the club just a year later. Bournemouth came in with an offer on transfer deadline day of £18 million, which was immediately rejected. However, they were relentless in their pursuit of the player and when the offer reached £33 million + another £7.5 million after 50 appearances, I just couldn't reject the chance to make over £35 million profit in 12 months!
Incoming Transfer (Rotation Player); With only one recognised right back in the side, it was a position that urgently needed bolstering. I picked up Silvan Widmer from West Ham for a fee of £10.25 million, paying £5 million up front and the rest over the next 3 years. He will get plenty of game time and has a great opportunity to make that right back role his own with some good performances. Widmer signs a 4 year deal worth £45.5k per week.
Our pre season campaign couldn't have gone any better really. We recorded 5 wins in 6 games and drew the other, only conceding 1 goal and scoring 15! Our tour to China went well and the lads look ready to go for the season!
Despite our decent campaign last year, the pre season preview still shows the bookies fancy us to get relegated along with Norwich and Blackburn. None of our players make the dream 11 and its Brooks and Shaqiri that have been highlighted as our key players for the season.
We kick off the season with a comfortable win over newly promoted, Norwich. We were always in control of this one and to be honest, the only real surprise was that we only scored 2!
English Premier Division Matchday 2 - Blackburn Rovers (Away) Lost 2-1
We immediately put the disappointment of the Blackburn result behind us with a massive victory over Chelsea! I never would have pinned us to bag 5 goals against them, but Ayew was absolutely phenomenal and the Chelsea defence simply couldn't deal with him!
English Premier Division Matchday 4 - Aston Villa (Away) Lost 3-1
It only took 21 seconds for us to take the lead in this game, but that was about as good as it got for us unfortunately! Villa have become a bit of a machine over the past couple of seasons and after a fantastic campaign last year, they have started this year just as well with 3 wins from 4, including this result against us here!
Carabao Cup 2nd Round - Leicester City (Home) Won 4-1
Aiden O'Brien gave us the lead on his first start for the club, before couple of late goals in the first half from both sides left us 2-1 up at the break. Andrei Ciucur added his 2nd of the game only 10 minutes into the 2nd half and we looked good for the win with half an hour remaining. By the 70th minute we were 4-1 ahead, which enabled me to give debuts to Rossi Johnson and Alberto Balde from the U18s squad.
English Premier Division Matchday 5 - Crystal Palace (Home) Won 2-0
A good performance and a good win to finish off the month. Britt came off the bench to bag his first goal of the season and seal the win in the 2nd half.
Our main man up front has started the season well, with 6 goals and an assist this month! If we can get some more consistency out of him and produce more performances like those against Chelsea and Norwich, we'll have a real star striker on our hands.
Other News
Frank Lampard is back in business as manager of Reading.
What have I learned from our first month of competitive action this season...that we are currently a much better side at home than we are away! Winning all 4 games at home with relative ease and progressing in the cup is a good start to the season though and it means we finish August inside the top 7!
Another away game, another defeat! This was a close game that could have gone either way to be fair, but we were just edged out by our south coast opponents on the day!
English Premier Division Matchday 7 - Manchester United (Away) Lost 1-0
Considering how bad our home form is, I half expected us to get a good stuffing away at Old Trafford. Instead, we actually turned in our best away performance of the season so far....although we still lost!
Carabao Cup 3rd Round - Fleetwood Town (Away) Won 3-0
We followed up our first away win of the season, with our first home defeat! Defensively, we were a ******* shambles here and couldn't deal with Everton's two front men throughout the 90 minutes!
It wasn't a great month for anyone really, but George came back into the starting lineup this month and has proved he is still worthy of my consideration.
Other News
Daniel Ayala picked up an injury in training that will see him miss 3 months of action!!
Our commercial income has almost doubled over the past season and seen us move up the ranks a little bit, although we're still bringing in less than most through our commercial activity!
Well apart from progressing in the Carabao Cup, that was a shocker of a month as we lost all 3 league games! It's seen us slip into the bottom half of the table and if we're not careful we could very quickly lose touch with the top 10! With games next month against Liverpool and Spurs, it's not going to be easy to get back to winning ways, but now is the time I need the lads to rally round and pick themselves up...with a little kick up the **** from me of course.
Middlesbrough's biggest ever league win came all the way back in 1958, when they beat Brighton 9-0! Brian Clough found the back of the net 5 times on that day!
October 2020
English Premier Division Matchday 9 - Liverpool (Away) Lost 2-0
Liverpool had scored an incredible 33 goals in their opening 8 league games before this one, so I guess a respectable 2-0 scoreline isn't actually that bad! Although it doesn keep us on a run of 4 straight losses in the league now which is not good!
English Premier Division Matchday 10 - Wolverhampton Wanderers (Home) Drew 0-0
The blame for not winning this game lies at the feet of Britt Assombalonga as he came off the bench to miss two clear cut chances, both one on ones with the keeper! A bad point for us in a game we had to win!
English Premier Division Matchday 11 - Tottenham Hotspur (Away) Lost 3-0
Simply not good enough...don't get me wrong, I know Spurs are a top team, but we didn't compete in any area of the pitch and looked totally out of place!
Carabao Cup 4th Round - West Bromwich Albion (Home) Won 3-1
At least we finished the month on a bit of a high with further progression in the Carabao Cup. I rotated the squad quite a bit for this one and the players who came in did really well as we recorded a pretty easy win over our Championship opponents.
In a month where our attacking play was pretty awful, it was always likely a defender would win the award and Aden Flint has been the most consistent player over the past 4 games.
Other News
Right at the beginning of the month, Howson picked up an injury which would keep him out for the whole of October.
Jack Robinson picked up an injury that would keep him out for the rest of the month, against Liverpool. It also meant at that point, I had no left back with Ben Davies also out injured....although Davies was scheduled to return to training before the Wolves game!
Luckily, we progressed in the cup and at the moment it's looking likely that a cup win might be our only chance of a successful season as we fail to win again this month in the league! We are sliding down the table fast after a decent start and I have to wonder if my job will come under scrutiny at any point if this keeps on! With potential new owners on the horizon, it's a nervous time for everyone involved in the club and we could really do with picking up a couple of wins next month to steady the ship a little.
A massive 3 points at the London Stadium against the Hammers. We really needed to kick off this month in a positive way and this will be a huge boost to the morale of the squad as we look to get our league campaign back on track.
English Premier Division Matchday 13 - Leicester City (Home) Lost 2-0
Our joy at ending our winless streak against West Ham is shortlived as we are beaten here in our next game. We struggled to deal with Callum Wilson when he was at Bournemouth and now he's joined The Foxes, nothing's changed!
English Premier Division Matchday 14 - Brighton & Hove Albion (Away) Lost 1-0
This was a big game for both sides with us both struggling, but it was the home side that came out on top! We had the better chances but couldn't take them. The inconsistency of our strikers is costing us so far this season!
English Premier Division Matchday 15 - Newcastle United (Home) Won 2-1
There's been a little unrest amongst the fans lately, but if there's one thing that will win them back over, it's a win over your arch rivals! We were 1-0 down at the break, but a brilliant 2nd half performance saw us turn it around and grab a massive 3 points!
We got the couple of wins this month that we so badly needed and it keeps us away from the relegation places for the time being. However, we are under no illusions that we are involved in the relegation battle at present, but if we can pick up 2 or 3 more victories next month we should move closer to the top half of the table and be able to look ahead of us rather than behind!
