What I learned from the the Carabao cup exit without even watching the game.
It was not an important fixture to win, but it would have been nice, but to essentially match up our reserves vs theirs days after their u23's thrashed us 4-1 was pretty much always going to go their way.
So what have I learned?

Middlesbrough.
Firstly that Middlesbrough have a very decent young side. Some 18 yr olds sparkled against our defenders, whilst our youngsters struggled a bit.

Middlesbrough's manager
Monk is the luckiest manager around. To inherit Karanka's squad is incredible. How did this guy lose his job? They had like the 5th best defensive record in the prem last season but got promoted. This season they have 3 forwards who have torn up the Championship in recent seasons and Fletcher ain't bad either.

We missed out.
Bamford is the real deal. Chelsea fans are still upset he was let go and Villa wanted him badly. But, he chose Boro as they were in the Premier league...for 4 months anyway. How different would it have been had he come to us?

We have a manager?
Bruce is a pretty poor manager. Well, he's not pretty either. He went off at half time looking ticked at the performance and we came back out facing a side who down graded at half time to an 18 year old centre back and we looked worse than the first half and the 18 yr old could have been Beckenbaur the way we made him look.

Our Manager's signings.
The players out there that Bruce bought in January weren't very good. Lansbury, who I thought would be a decent signing has been anything but. Hogan, another I believe is a decent player must be going through a crisis of confidence. We don't give him much to work with, but his first touch needs work and Thor sounds like he needs 3 seasons of reserve team football before he can think about playing again.

Centre Backs.
Another Bruce signing isn't doing to well either, Samba isn't making us forget Baker y'know Steve? As for RDM's big deal Elphick. Great guy, thorough professional but his performances have been well below advertised. Time to start using Suliman and Clark as relief for Chester and Terry.

Attendance.
11,100 is a worse gate than we ever had under Lerner. This tells you the fans knew the reserves were going to play and they knew we were going to get beat. Dr X might want to start addressing these areas, by dropping prices for these non drawing matches .