Yes as like the last 2 he picked stronger opponents rather than a pre-season tour of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. He had a competitive fixture with Fulham and Nice. It would have also helped if he had a settled squad that he was improving rather than being forced to reduce and wait weeks into the season to replace.
The Bristol City game could realistically gone either way at one point and if we had a settled defence, playing mental ball like that we could have won. The 3 other league fixtures, I wouldn’t say we were unlucky as you do make your own luck. However individual errors cost us the 1 goal in each of the games, although they could have come at any time, under Wilder and Hecky we seemed to have that bit of luck that went for us. The game I always think about is the Bash arriving away at Leeds, they hit the post, missed sitters all over the place but a flicked on hoof ball sat nicely for Bash to shin it in. Realistically on stats paper we didn’t deserve to win that but we rode our luck. With ‘Boro yesterday we had more possession, more passes and 8 shots but without a shot on target we aren’t going to win, not to single anyone out too much but if Mee is in that CB partnership Boro don’t score that goal yesterday and we probably frustratingly get a 0-0 draw out of that.