I've come to the conclusion that not only is Sam Allardyce, in terms of playing style, one of the most boring and negative managers out there, but he's also, quite frankly, utterly deluded. He believes we were unlucky not to win last night, citing our superior possession of the ball in what he seems to think makes up for a near-complete lack of creativity, inventiveness or goal scoring opportunities of any sort. Middlesbrough are the ones who should feel unlucky, with a shot ricocheting off the crossbar and another cleared off the line late into the game, they made up for what they lacked in possession with the sort of pace and incisiveness that our team desperately need.
Firstly, one up front just isn't working. At all. It's quite amusing, because the commentators see Maynard, Cole & Taylor and think we're playing 4-3-3, but we're not, it's 4-3-2-1, with centre-half Tomkins playing in a holding midfield role and striker Maynard playing on the right wing.
Secondly, our midfield, easily our strongest asset last season, are seemingly incapable of finding space to either receive the ball or pass up to the strikers. There's no cleverness to our movement, no inventiveness in our runs. And the result is that our full backs are left with little option other than to hoof the ball up front, to little effect.
Thirdly, Sam's continually whining about the home fans booing him and the team after another of their dull and negative performances. That complaint may have held weight when we were at the top of the table, looking certain for automatic promotion, but now we've squandered that lead, dropped out of the automatic promotion places and sit 7 points off the top. He likes to parrot that we're "unbeaten in 9", yet 6 of those 9 were draws we were lucky to scrape a point from. The fans boo him because it's obvious from the outset that he's doing nothing tactically to change that. We're set up entirely to play negative, point scrimping football, and that's exactly what we get. A perfect example of this came when we scored the opener after 67 minutes in last night's game - Sam's response? Take off both our strikers and revert to an even more defensive formation, alerting our negative intent to, not only the fans, but to Middlesbrough also, who took advantage and earned a point for themselves.
If we don't get promoted automatically, we're not getting promoted this season, which would be utterly disastrous. This team just doesn't have the quality, the passion or the belief to fight through the play-off's, and even if they did, Sam'd probably still find some way to cock it all up and then blame the fans for having unrealistic expectations. /rant