BORO1 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur
BORO started Brightly with Garry O'Neil coming closest in the opening minutes, as his driven cross cut across the face of goal whilst Stewart Downing nearly latched onto it as he slid in at the far post.
BORO, who had started without Jonathan Woodgate at the back, through injury, continued mounting pressure with Tuncay and Aliadiere linking up well as they did last week at Old Trafford.
But BORO, once again, conceded the first goal in front of a mere 25, 000 fans as they looked to
turn their season around. Spurs' new boss, Juande Ramos, opted to drop Robbie Keane and Dimitar Berbatov from the starting line up in favour of Jermaine Defoe and Darren Bent, and it was Bent who opened the scoring just 10 minutes before half time after some superb link-up play with Defoe, slicing the BORO deffence wide open and slotting the ball past Schwarzer at the near post.Moments later, Defoe and Bent combined again and nearly scored a second. This time Bent's flick just narrowly skewed wide of the far post.
BORO had to start the second half the same way they did the first and they did, with new vigour and determination. Aliadiere saw his header palmed away by Paul Robinson before, 7 minutes into the second half, right-back Luke Young was presented with the ball from Gary O'Neil and, from 25 yards out, he smashed the ball into the top corner of the net, with a first time shot.
The goal revived the players and the fans and quite fitting that such a goal should come from a player who, just last week, spoke of how he was sick of seeing opposition teams scoring 'wonder goals' past BORO.
Aliadiere had a late penalty shout turned down as his cross clearly hit Michael Dawson on the hand and so the game seemed to just wind down from then, as both teams played for the draw and were reluctant to break for fear of getting caught out defensively.
"We know what we need to do in games but it's not happening - we keep conceding the first goal and that never makes things easy.
"But we scored a fantastic goal to draw level and that was deserved after a nice spell of possession. A draw was probably fair". - BORO boss, Gareth Southgate.
Attendance: 25, 625
BORO Blog BORO Man of the Match: Gary O'Neil (captain)
3 comments:
I think you were lucky that Keane did not start. He was their star player against us at Anfield and I think he is developing (finally) into one of the best players in the league. Good to get a point out of the game but you must be disappointed with the attendance.
Absolutely! BORO's dwindling attendances have come as a result of poor displays, however.
Therefore Gareth Southgate must start to turn things around if he wants to see more fans at the games. On the other hand, this is a time where the fans ought to get behind the team and support them through the rough times. Perhaps the club should introduce reduced ticket prices or added incentives to fans whilst the team are in poor form, after all the fans don't want to be paying good money week in - week out to watch the BORO put in a disappointing display and walk away without points.
Don't get me started about ticket prices. It seems clubs would rather have 15,000 paying 20 pounds (300,000 pounds receipts) rather than 25,000 paying 10 pounds (250,000 pounds receipts).
This is all wrong to me as the bigger crowd creates a better atmosphere and in time will boost attendances and the whole experience.
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