Did AFCB really need a defeat like the Boro game?

Eddie Howe said after the Middlesbrough defeat that perhaps the side needed a defeat like that and they perhaps they are not as good as they think they are. Looking at the table you can read it both ways for AFCB. They have 12 points and are in the top 10, but they are also just five points away from the relegation zone. The league is still forming and it's very tight so one win or defeat is having a big impact on fan's perception of how the team is doing, but perhaps Eddie is right in thinking it is unrealistic to believe that AFCB are set to be a permanent fixture in the top half of the table just yet.

Eddie Howe still knows AFCB are far from the finished article.

Of course no team needs a defeat or wants one, but it gives everyone the chance to reassess their performance more critically and to shake up those who thought they were doing all right. The defeat was not a huge mauling, but Howe knows his players were not at their best and that is what will be puzzling him. How can a side that was on the top of their form can fall so far short in the next game? You can put it down to the Premier League I suppose. 

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It is the smalldetails that everybody tries to put right every week on the training ground that should put a side in good stead come match day. Howe and his staff will have plenty of time to assess what was missing against Middlesbrough and I would probably start to be fearing the worst if I was a Sunderland fan, knowing that AFCB will be sharpening their skills for the next game. It may just have been a blip and a week when there was not going to be a buzz about the players for whatever reason, but they will have to get back to finding what they were doing so well in previous games.

Keeping clean sheets and scoring first are great when they come off, but sometimes it takes more of a team to come back from behind and win and against Boro there was not a great flicker of belief that the side were going to do that. They have to be fully prepared now for another fixture against a side that will scrap really hard and the message will be to go and do the damage early to blow away the disappoing memory of the Riverside.