Written by SumsECFC
1st November 2023

As the dust settles on our Carabao Cup run to the last 16, I felt that it was time to write down my thoughts on last night’s performance against Middlesbrough, which was much better than the last time I wrote after the Derby game. Since then, we picked up a much-needed point against Lincoln to stop the run of defeats which was looking alarming, and of course last night gave a heroic performance against a side higher up the football pyramid.

It was great to see Harry Kite back in the middle with Kyle Taylor, freeing up Ryan Trevitt to get into attacking situations which of course led to his two superb goals. Before the game we’d only scored 2 in the month of October, last night doubled that to 4 with 3 of those goals coming from Trev himself – no prizes for guessing who Goal of the Month for October is likely to go to!

The first half was a resolute defensive performance, and we went in deservedly 1-0 up at the break. Unfortunately though, as the second half began, we had a 10-minute period where we failed to get going and in that time Boro scored two to take the lead, and their quality showed. We battled on and Trev did superbly well to get his second, but then 10 minutes before the end he gave away a penalty thanks to a shirt-pull on a Boro player, which was dispatched to send the Teessiders into the quarter finals.

One worry from last night is the injury situation – after losing Reece Cole to injury late on on Saturday, Demitri Mitchell went off with an injury towards the end of the first half and was seen on crutches, so to me that doesn’t look good, but hopefully he won’t be out for too long. Jack Fitzwater also went off with a knock in the second half, so how long he’ll be out for too remains to be seen. On the plus side, Ilmari Niskanen is not far off from returning to the side and I doubt it’ll be too long before we see Dion Rankine back too, which will hopefully give us a bit of attacking impetus on the flanks.

Although saying that, it gives opportunity for younger players to stake their claim for a place in the first team, with quite a few academy lads on the bench last night. Coming on for the final throes of the game was Jake Richards, who impressed Gary Caldwell in pre-season and got a bit of game time towards the start of this season. Hopefully opportunities will be provided for us to see more of him as the season goes on.

On social media post-match last night, there was a lot of flak aimed towards James Scott, who seems to be having a tough time finding form at the moment. Whether that’s due to personal issues or he’s just not up to the standard at present, it’s something that needs to be looked into. Considering he once commanded a £1m fee, I’m sure that there’s much more potential in there that he’s not showing us as yet, but the fact that we’re thin on the ground bodies-wise at the moment up top means he’s thrown in each time regardless. It may be that the injury he picked up earlier in the season has affected him, but there’s been times in the last couple of games where he’s had chances that he’s missed that would have been easier to score. For instance, we were attacking in stoppage time last night, he went for the header and ended up heading it backwards towards our own half! I hope for his sake that he finds his form again soon, same with Admiral Muskwe, who we haven’t really seen a lot of as yet.

For me, we’re crying out for a Jayden Stockley-type figure to get on the end of chances that we’re creating, thankfully there’s only a couple of months now until the transfer window opens up again so hopefully in January we’ll be able to get someone in who can get the goals we crave. Until then though, we have to work with what we’ve got so hopefully the players can up their game, boost their confidence a little bit and get some more points on the board.

Despite going out last night and our recent poor form, I think we can be proud of the fact that we’ve made it this far and hopefully on Saturday we can start another cup run, when we lock horns for the second time in a couple of weeks with Wigan Athletic. Based on last night’s efforts and the poor performance Wigan put in against us a couple of weeks back, although they won then I fancy us to get revenge on Saturday and progress to Round 2. The players should be buoyed from that performance last night, and hopefully we can kick on from there.

On a final note, I’ve got to mention that the support last night was absolutely superb. The display pre-match was a thing of beauty, and the fact that GC even played a part in helping to paint the banner goes to show how well he has bought in to what our club is about. Although we’re not getting the results we would like at the moment, I’m confident that he’s the right man to take us forward and hope that the hard work that both fans and players put in over the next few weeks will be rewarded.

As one door closes in the League Cup for another season, another one opens with the FA Cup. See you Saturday. UTC.