Andy Munro comments on Blues’ defeat at Middlesbrough. 

It’s now beginning to seem the same wherever we play. In fact, our reverse against a decent but not outstanding ‘Boro side seemed on the cards from the moment the back page of the Mail featured a photo of an inane, grinning Steve Watson and a headline of ‘We Love Our Takeaways!’ or something along those lines.

In fairness to Lee Clark, he started the team with an attacking line up and he is apparently still “frustrated” by defensive “schoolboy” errors. Well, he’s not half as frustrated as the fans who, unlike him, aren’t paid half a million pounds a year. If you set aside his tinkering, the sides that he usually picks have a semblance of logic but it seems patently obvious that the players aren’t assimilating his instructions.

Again, on paper Blues have a decent side but don’t seem to be able to operate as an effective unit, either in getting forward or defending effectively. However, I certainly don’t buy the Tom Ross mantra that we have completely threadbare playing resources.

It was perhaps the reverse of the icing on the cake when Boro’s nine men scored a third to make it a dullingly depressing defeat. Therein lies the worry in that our next away game is again against a technically superior TEAM and then we have the cross to bear of three home games.

Will we go down? I think it’ll be close but I reckon we’ll scrape home. What side should we play? I don’t think that it will make much difference as it’s down to management and motivation. All I know, without meaning to be vindictive, is that I wouldn’t play the over-rated and over-inflated Andrew Shinnie. Also if Novak’s injury keeps him out, I would add Aswante to the match squad because he is now fit and scoring. Incidentally, David Moyes hasn’t picked the same Manchester United team once and although Clark has with Blues, a couple of times, methinks there is a parallel in the effect that tinkering has on performance outturn.