A Flat Display

BORO 0 - 2 Chelsea

BORO put in yet another disappointing display on Saturday as they were defeated 2-0 by an out of form Chelsea team, who have had to contend with the recent loss of their greatest ever manager Jose Mourinho.

Fresh back from injury, Didier Drogba opened the scoring for Chelsea after just 8 minutes when Frank Lampard fed the ball through for Drogba to calmly slot the ball across Mark Schwarzer into the corner of the net.

BORO could have equalised when Mido headed a Gary O'Neil cross into the arms of Petr Cech. As Chelsea sat back and seemed content with their 1 goal lead, BORO enjoyed a healthy share of possession but created little in the way of chances, despite a less than impressive display from Chelsea.

Drogba then came close to bagging a second as he curled a free kick just wide of the goal.

Gareth Southgate must have stuck a rocket up the backside of his players in the second half as they returned from half time looking threatening and ready to take the game to Chelsea, but with just over 10 minutes of the second half played Chelsea put the game beyond BORO as Alex drilled a superb free kick, from at least 30 yards, into the top corner beyond the stretching Mark Schwarzer.

Mido was the closest to scoring for BORO as he saw a series of headed chances stopped by Petr Cech and Gary O'Neil sliced a shot over the bar from close range as the game neared a close and BORO looked resigned to yet another league defeat, leaving the club hovering just above the drop zone.


I don't like to be negative about the BORO too much. But one has to ask, with all of these defeats and with us lying too close to the relegation zone for comfort, if we were one of the top 4 or 6 teams would Gareth Southgate have most certainly been shown the door by now?
I know that it's never a good idea to sack a manager because there is a chance that it can have an adverse effect on the team and Gareth Southgate did, indeed, start the season alright and certainly improved on Steve McClaren's premiership finish in his first season. But with a string of poor results and having conceded 18 goals in 10 games we must start to look at where we go from here. I am almost certain that the stubborn Steve Gibson will stick by Southgate no matter what, and so it is from here that Southgate must do something to combat the fact that BORO are conceding too many goals. His quest for a more attacking BORO team has led to forfeiting his quality deffence.