A long and miserable day and journey generally capped off by yet another passive and negative away day performance where we never layed a glove on them (or even threw a punch really), all framed around a truly head scratching team selection.
Reflections;
> The Hogan thing has been done to death on here and my thoughts on him are well known but I would be interested to know exactly what it was that he had shown to Rooney and co over the last week or so that got him into the starting line up yesterday, given the way in which the team had largely thrived when he was finally left out?
> Our new Brains trust (Rooney, Cole, O'Shea et al) have an astonishing amount of medals and big game experience, and (you would imagine) plenty of football nous, and so if they had watched the playbacks of all of this seasons games and analysed them accordingly in order to familiarise themselves with the strengths and weaknesses of our squad, then how did they think that playing those players in that formation was ever going to work. Other than starting Juke (god bless him) as well then that was probably the least mobile line up we could put out there, and every Blues fan knew that we had no chance of pressing anyone as soon as that team and formation was released at 2pm.
> Also I would like to ask that brains trust how, when they looked at Boro and the way they play they seemed to take no account of how important Jones is to them and he is a player you have to look to nullify. We let him terrorise poor old Longello and I lost count of the number of times they got to the by-line - but we did nothing to counter this threat that I could see.
I could go on and on, but for a bright new dawn amidst all the talk of '#no fear', then that was actually the exact opposite, and Rooney and co are now on the back foot as we have some tough games coming up, and they need to step up and show us they are as pragmatic and switched on as you need to be in this Division, or you're going to get exposed.
I really hope they can do the business....
KRO
