Friday, January 11, 2008

Boro bother


I hate Boro. They are a sad, small time club who play stupid music when their team (occasionally) score. This makes it even more galling when they manage to hold us to a draw. I've nothing against Southgate but I don't think he's doing a great job. He'll be happy enough with how he did against us.

I didn't get to see the match yesterday but saw highlights. From what I saw and read, we were fairly lethargic until we scored and we launched a late barrage. But it's another case of too little, too late. We should have been at them from the off, rather than giving them the impetus to get a goal in front and have them trying to hit us on the break. The goal wasn't great from a defensive point of view and looks like it should have been dealt with.

But yet again that kid Torres gets us out of jail. He decided that he wasn't going to take being beaten by a rabble like Boro and ran at them before unleashing an unstoppable shot. That's 11 league goals already. There is some talk that we are too easy to stop offensively as our goal threat lies only in Gerrard and el Nino. There is some truth in that but I'm hoping that Babel will start to add to the threat. He went close a few times yesterday. But it is a point that we do need to spread not only the goals, but also the attacking threat around a bit more.

Rafa says that he's going to pick his strongest team against Luton on Tuesday night. I was hoping to see the likes of Insua and maybe Nemeth get a run out but I would imagine that Rafa is trying to get back to winning ways first. As I've said before, the domestic cups are nice competitions to win but don't matter much if you lose.

It now looks as if Momo will not be going to Juve. But the same article from Sky Sports has quotes from Mancini at Inter who seem to be interested in him too. I like Momo but he hasn't been the same since his injury and I would be in favour of letting him go if we get a good price.


Rafa has signed Martin Skrtel from Zenit St Petersberg. He is big, strong, young and quick according to Rafa. These are qualities that we could definitely do with in our defense. The fee has been debated and it's either £4m or £6.5m depending on who you listen to. I don't think that we'll be doing any more purchases this month but we may see Momo leave.

There has been some speculation in the observer and some other papers today that Hicks and Gillett are having problems refinancing their debt and they may sell up. DIC from Dubai, who failed to buy the club last year, are rumoured to be interested in buying them out. The DIC rumours have been bubbling under on the forums for the last few months so it's nothing new. I'm not going to say too much about the boardroom wranglings because, frankly it bores me.

Let's twat the hatters.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Phew, that felt better. Nothing like a good hammering of a minnow to perk a club up. Agree with you on the boardroom stuff being tedious but in a way i can't wait for this season to be over so things can be sorted out; whether its new owners, manager or players.

On a happier note, do you reckon babel should get a run up front with torres? Okay he fluffed a few lines last night but overall I think he deserves it.

Freelance Vagrant said...

Mal O'Brien, How do.

I just saw that an old blog I kept had a comment attached to it. Exhaustive reading of said comment led me to, eh, reading your name.

In response to your query: I am okay. How are you? Are you also okay? It is devoutly to be wished.

Yours (pending) Patrick Martin

Mal said...

I'm fine Patrick, good to hear from you. Just started a new Multimedia job. What are you up to now besides freelance vagrancy?

Mal said...

JJ, I would like to see Babel playing up front in a few matches. He looks more likely to score than any of our other strikers excluding Torres. The problem is that we don't have too many decent options on the left now.

Freelance Vagrant said...

Hi Mal,

Oddly, I am just this day leaving a job in multimedia. I don't see you in the doorway so I presume it's not my job you're taking. I look forward to working in some other place soon. Destination unknown. Drop me a mail some time, baby: patrick.martin.ie@gmail.com