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Matchday Thread PNE v Middlesbrough -14-02-24 - KO:7.45PM - Championship

Matchday Thread PNE v Middlesbrough -14-02-24 - KO:7.45PM - Championship

Back from the match. Hard fought win against decent opposition. Felt we looked "leggy" in first half on a heavy pitch. Midfield was very open, particularly in second half to Boro coming forward. As usual a desperate last 20 minutes holding on. Positives, Our positive reaction to Boros goal, Emil scoring again, some sublime touches from Mads and return of Freddie's confidence. Negatives, injuries, loss of some of Millar's impact playing on the right (we got away with it last night) oh ! and Millie's miss.. Still 3 points not to b e spurned.
 
That was a tremendous football match at Deepdale, for which both teams deserve immense credit.
Fully committed from start to finish, North End met more than their match in midfield, and withstood - just - many waves of slick passing football. The home side was stretched to the limit by an excellent Middlesbrough team. Could Carrick be a future England manager, perhaps? On last night's evidence, I would certainly give him my vote.
Despite their talented opposition, North End managed to find a weakness or two, and their no nonsense, direct approach produced an efficient conversion rate, as opposed to the wayward, long range shooting of the opposition for the large part.
On another day, this could have gone badly wrong, which offers a lot of credit to the opposition. However, this North End side has goals in it, which represents a transformation within a short period of time, that should give opposition managers more than a mild headache in weeks to come.
A superb match to watch.
 
We can't go into Saturday's game with the same sterile wingback pairing. As we've seen before, Millar is oddly ineffective on the right and against Rovers' dodgy defence, we need him where he can cause maximum damage.

Brady offered virtually nothing on the left. Even with space behind his opponent at times, he hasn't got the pace to go past him. He put a couple of decent crosses in but nowhere near enough.

It's far from ideal, but I'd put Browne on the right - where, after all, he's played for his country - and bring McCann in.
 
If you’re not playing well and winning….

And last night certainly slotted into that category.

Guts, effort and commitment got us through that.

Tactics were very strange, but it worked.
 
Schemer said:
We can't go into Saturday's game with the same sterile wingback pairing. As we've seen before, Millar is oddly ineffective on the right and against Rovers' dodgy defence, we need him where he can cause maximum damage.

Brady offered virtually nothing on the left. Even with space behind his opponent at times, he hasn't got the pace to go past him. He put a couple of decent crosses in but nowhere near enough.

It's far from ideal, but I'd put Browne on the right - where, after all, he's played for his country - and bring McCann in.
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Although it’s one game at a time maybe he was keeping his powder dry for Saturday.

Injuries to Hughes and Lindsay and Whiteman were concerning, adding to the loss of Pottsino.
And they put some serious effort into that match, I hope they recover ok for Saturday.
 
europne said:
Although it’s one game at a time maybe he was keeping his powder dry for Saturday.

Injuries to Hughes and Lindsay and Whiteman were concerning, adding to the loss of Pottsino.
And they put some serious effort into that match, I hope they recover ok for Saturday.
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I didn't realise Lindsay and Whiteman were injured. If they are, it will leave us a bit stretched for Saturday.
 
paolo poggi said:
That was a tremendous football match at Deepdale, for which both teams deserve immense credit.
Fully committed from start to finish, North End met more than their match in midfield, and withstood - just - many waves of slick passing football. The home side was stretched to the limit by an excellent Middlesbrough team. Could Carrick be a future England manager, perhaps? On last night's evidence, I would certainly give him my vote.
Despite their talented opposition, North End managed to find a weakness or two, and their no nonsense, direct approach produced an efficient conversion rate, as opposed to the wayward, long range shooting of the opposition for the large part.
On another day, this could have gone badly wrong, which offers a lot of credit to the opposition. However, this North End side has goals in it, which represents a transformation within a short period of time, that should give opposition managers more than a mild headache in weeks to come.
A superb match to watch.
Click to expand...
1CB108A8-CA1E-4698-B41D-DF0A9EB2677B.gif
 
That Azaz looked fucking quality, didn’t he? Couldn’t have struck the ball more sweetly for his goal.

Feel bizarrely in limbo watching this team. In Mads, Millar, Keane and Riis, we know we have the players going forward who can excite and decide the outcome of a game with one or two enterprising bits of play. Genuinely heartening that we have these kinds of players available to us having been deprived of them for so long (probably going back to McGeady/CR7).

However, we seem to be able to string together so few incisive patterns of play, sometimes down to a real carelessness in possession, that we don’t see this flair, guile and penetration come to the fore enough. When it does, like it did against Cardiff for the second goal and last night for Ossie’s missed chance, it’s very effective and great to watch. But it’s just so infrequent. It’s like we have more than enough proof that the quality is there but something, or several things, is holding it back. The recent run of results is good, and I genuinely look forward to going on again right now, but you can’t shake the feeling that we could, and should, be playing better.
 
northender0602 said:
I think that was far from the worst performance, we worked hard, I think Middlesbrough deserved something out of it, but we have had good games and got nowt. It’s how it goes sometimes.
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We worked hard sure, that’s the bare minimum for me. Our press was completely disconnected, the front 3 were about 30 yards ahead of the midfield 2 which meant it was incredibly easy for them to break through and then our midfield were completely outnumbered.

If Boro had any sort of cutting edge they’d have battered us last night, thankfully they were shite in the final third and we weren’t!
 
B(rad)P(otts)IG said:
We worked hard sure, that’s the bare minimum for me. Our press was completely disconnected, the front 3 were about 30 yards ahead of the midfield 2 which meant it was incredibly easy for them to break through and then our midfield were completely outnumbered.

If Boro had any sort of cutting edge they’d have battered us last night, thankfully they were shite in the final third and we weren’t!
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Exactly this. Happened time after time. Mads, in particular, pressed tirelessly but it was all a bit moot considering those behind him were pretty static and didn’t move up to support him. Repeatedly left a gaping chasm for Boro to exploit.

The press was something Boro did really well I thought, before our goal knocked the wind out of them for the rest of the half. They pressed compactly in packs of like 3s and 4s, really constricting space. We were outnumbered a lot of the time in those tight spaces (and looked that way generally) and could barely get out of our half. They were also really good at overloading when they had the ball, seemed to have passing options everywhere and got through and around us fairly comfortably for the first 20 minutes. Movement of their front 4 was also really clever, constantly dragging players across the line and out of position to create big gaps. Just fortunate for us they were shite at finishing.
 
B(rad)P(otts)IG said:
We worked hard sure, that’s the bare minimum for me. Our press was completely disconnected, the front 3 were about 30 yards ahead of the midfield 2 which meant it was incredibly easy for them to break through and then our midfield were completely outnumbered.

If Boro had any sort of cutting edge they’d have battered us last night, thankfully they were shite in the final third and we weren’t!
Click to expand...
I don’t want to get too much into the Carrick argument but I honestly thought they looked like a well coached team, especially when it came to developing an attack through the defence, but lacked the tools to take advantage of it. I also thought we were hampered by Browne and Whiteman carrying knocks.
 
Simple game football. People wondering how we won. Middlesborough no strikers. PNE have got strikers, we get close to goal and we score. The upturn in results has come with Riis' return and Keane's help. We scored more than the opposition in the last 3 games.
I expect Saturday to be another grind but my money's on us.
 
Lashers are taking the piss out of us on Twitter for cocking up the banner ……
 
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