When summarising his side’s heavy defeat at the hands of Middlesbrough on Tuesday evening, a clearly agitated Ryan Lowe admitted he expected better of his Preston North End side, making the point he didn’t think Boro were the ‘formidable force’ they were last season.
The Lilywhites boss wasn’t intending to be disrespectful and indeed went on to clarify that he still believed Boro have a fantastic head coach in Michael Carrick and some top players, as they proved in the Riverside victory. But he was, in reality, only saying what we all know in terms of the difference in quality between Boro of last season and this.
With his own side improving this season to come into the game sitting six places and four points better off than Boro, he certainly had not expected to watch his side lose by the same margin as last season on Teesside, when Carrick was then able to call upon the attacking talents of the likes of Ryan Giles, Aaron Ramsey, Cameron Archer and Chuba Akpom.
In a sense of not getting too carried away with Tuesday night’s victory, as nice as it was in the moment, Lowe’s frustrations with his own side were understandable. Boro were ruthless in scoring four times, but the reality is, they didn’t have to be anywhere near last season’s attacking levels to knock four past North End this time, because the visitors were so disappointingly poor.
You can only beat what’s in front of you though, as the old cliche goes, and even if it’s not a victory to get too carried away about, there were certainly plenty of positives to take from it – the most obvious being what it did tell us about this season’s incarnation of Boro.
Lowe may be right about Boro’s formidability factor this season compared to last. But the issue, as would come to haunt that Boro side, was a lack of squad depth and balance. Far fewer injuries than the ones Boro are currently nursing right now ultimately derailed their season last term.
As Carrick pointed out after the Preston win, eight senior players missed the game through injury and you can add bright prospect Sonny Finch as a ninth. ‘It’s the makings of a good team in itself,” Carrick joked.
And that is the one big improvement Boro have made from last season. Their squad depth now, to be able to deal with so many absentees is so much better. Let’s be honest, even the most optimistic amongst us would have seen Boro’s team an hour before kick-off, unexpectedly minus Dael Fry, Hayden Hackney and Sam Greenwood, and feared the worst.
But the players forced to step in ultimately all carried out their duties brilliantly, which speaks volumes about how well-coached this Boro team are. It seems strange to say after a 4-0 victory, but it was arguably Boro’s defensive discipline on the evening, particularly with the context of the makeshift back four, that was the most pleasing aspect.
Coming off the back of the sloppy errors that ultimately cost them at Bristol City on Saturday, it was the perfect response from Carrick’s side as they recorded a fifth Championship clean sheet in nine games.
They are positive signs of a side moving in the right direction, and yet we do have to appreciate that there are some truths in Lowe’s verdict on Boro. In many ways, it makes the importance of defensive discipline all the more important teams perhaps not showing Boro as much respect as last season are teams with far more spaces for Boro to exploit.
Five goals scored in their last two away games, for example, should have been more than enough for far more than the solitary point they yielded. On both occasions on the road, their defending ultimately let them down. But as they’ve proven, they are more than capable. The key, as we so often say, is consistency.
And that is Boro’s big challenge moving forward. They may not be feared right now as much as they were. But if they could start to show more defensive solidity, that would quickly change.
