Woodgate’s Home Town Clash

Written by billythekid

After the international break, our side gets back to the bread and butter football with nine games to go. They are just outside the play-off positions, but only three points behind with a game in hand. Our last Championship game was at Dean Court against fellow promotion hopefuls Swansea City, the Cherries won 3-0. Our next game is at Dean Court again at 3 pm on Good Friday, which is the start of a busy Easter period.

Our opponents travelling down from the North East are Middlesbrough the area where Jonathan Woodgate was born, played for the club and was manager, so this game will add a bit of extra spice against the Boro manager who took over from him, Neil Warnock. In the Cherries first away game of the season, the game ended in a 1-1 draw our goal coming from Dominic Solanke in the first half, Boro equalised through Marcus Browne in the second half.

Middlesbrough, nickname the Boro, themselves are just outside the play-off positions, sitting in 9th position and 6 points off the last play-off spot, but with a poorer GD to Reading who occupy it. Talking of Boro, I wondered why it has two o’s and the place name has only one, it seems from what I gather, it comes from a spelling mistake by the town clerk at the time who omitted an o, so instead of Middlesborough, it was spelt Middlesbrough as the name is today.

The Boro are sitting in the halfway spot in the away table with 23 points after 19 games, they have W 6, D 5, L 8. At the halfway stage of the season after 23 games, Middlesbrough were in 7th place with 36 points, AFCB were in 3rd place with 42 points but played one game more. In their last 6 away games they have beaten both Reading 0-2 and Coventry City 1-2. Drew 0-0 at Norwich and lost 2-1 to Derby County and Swansea City. In their last game against Millwall, it finished 1-0.

The last time we played against Middlesbrough at Dean Court in a league match was in AFCB’s second season in the Premier League, the Cherries won 4-0. The Cherries were 2-0 up after 16 minutes with goals from Josh King and Benik Afobe. Gaston Ramirez picked up a second yellow card after 20 minutes and left Middlesbrough with 10 men for the rest of the game. The Cherries scored a further 2 goals in the second half from Marc Pugh and Charlie Daniels.
In our home league games against Middlesbrough, AFCB have W 3, D 4, L 0.
All competitions, AFCB have W 4, D 8, L 7.