Borofan in peace Re: Karanka (15 replies)
Hi all, hope you don't mind me gatecrashing your board but I was just after your opinions on Aitor Karanka now you've had a few games under him. He split the Boro fans opinions due to his style of football, with half slating him for being ultra-negative and the other half idolising him for what he achieved.
Personally I am in the anti camp as, although he settled the ship at Boro and won us promotion (only for us to absolutely stink the Premeirship out!), his style of play was extremely defensive.
Yes, he made us hard to beat but he also made us hard to watch. He would have a 4 man defence with both Clayton and Leadbitter locked to within 10yards of the defence along with the 2 wide men under instruction not to neglect their defensive duties at all or face the wrath of the boss. This basically resulted in having Bamford upfront with Lee Tomlin behind him as his lone support, thankfully they were both superb for us that season which is the only reason we won any games.
Anyone who watched the play-off final were we lost to Norwich will have seen us go 2-0 down within the first 20 minutes and then fail to have a go at getting back at them. Norwich were happy to sit back and defend.......but so was Karanka! He eventually brought a second striker on in Kike but took Vossen off (who was playing in the number 10 role). he left both Clayton and Leadbitter on to protect the back 4 against a team who were winning 2-0 with 30 minutes of the final to go. Norwich weren't even considering threatening our defence so there was no need to protect them.
AK's philosophy seemed to want to win every game 0-0 and would tell us a 0-1 loss was a good result as it meant the goal difference wasn't damaged too much.
Personally I am in the anti camp as, although he settled the ship at Boro and won us promotion (only for us to absolutely stink the Premeirship out!), his style of play was extremely defensive.
Yes, he made us hard to beat but he also made us hard to watch. He would have a 4 man defence with both Clayton and Leadbitter locked to within 10yards of the defence along with the 2 wide men under instruction not to neglect their defensive duties at all or face the wrath of the boss. This basically resulted in having Bamford upfront with Lee Tomlin behind him as his lone support, thankfully they were both superb for us that season which is the only reason we won any games.
Anyone who watched the play-off final were we lost to Norwich will have seen us go 2-0 down within the first 20 minutes and then fail to have a go at getting back at them. Norwich were happy to sit back and defend.......but so was Karanka! He eventually brought a second striker on in Kike but took Vossen off (who was playing in the number 10 role). he left both Clayton and Leadbitter on to protect the back 4 against a team who were winning 2-0 with 30 minutes of the final to go. Norwich weren't even considering threatening our defence so there was no need to protect them.
AK's philosophy seemed to want to win every game 0-0 and would tell us a 0-1 loss was a good result as it meant the goal difference wasn't damaged too much.