Friday 3 January 2014

No Scapegoating, No Messiahs... Just The Need To Focus


It was agonising.

After twenty minutes at Bolton's Reebok Stadium, a ground we had never won at, we were already two goals up and threatening to cruise to our fourth straight victory and possibly clean sheet.

Even after Alex Baptiste pulled a goal back, our newly found resilience, coupled with the odd break away, looked like it might be enough to soak up the alarmingly regular Bolton pressure and see the game out.

Of course, there's that word – "might". For by match's end we were undone by a Typical Boro concession that we, and Aitor Karanka, hoped that we would have eradicated by now.

In a way, this is just as well.

Sometimes it is important to be reminded that we're not quite as good as we think we are. We were in danger of getting used to the wins. We were in danger of being spoilt. And we were in danger of thinking we might surge into the play-offs within another month, and beat Hull comfortably into the bargain. (Okay, that's very wishful thinking – but considering the nature of this crazy league, hardly impossible.)

As writer Jared Browne put it, "it is a truism in football that there are no messiahs, just the unrealistic expectations of beleaguered fans." That Boro were raised from pillory to pedestal so soon was indeed rather damaging. How right AK was to remind us, after the Reading game, that we hadn't won anything yet.

It is wrong to believe that one manager, no matter how gifted he is, can completely iron out a psyche that has existed in the Boro for seemingly forever.

Perhaps that is why we react to our key men being linked away (see: the recent reports about Forest's latest bid for Grant Leadbitter) with such fear, because we fear, in turn, that we will never be able to offer them the success and consistency they crave, however often we promise it. We know we can do it – but we doubt we will do it. You cannot bank on Boro, no matter who manages them. Even as the clock ticked down against Bolton, I had that feeling of predictable resignation about me, that we would think we'd done enough for the three points and get caught out yet again.

Selective statistics – the throwing away of a two-goal lead and a last minute concession – suggest we were robbed. Reality suggested that we were battered for long spells and that both our goals were late Christmas presents.

One wonders if we would have been cockily proclaiming the job done if Zat Knight hadn't tried to play with the ball in defence and had instead just cleared with a minimum of fuss. As conservative as Jack Charlton was accused of being when he allegedly considered ball-playing centre halves as "a dangerous indulgence", it’s at times like these you see his points.

Had Bolton lost, Knight would surely have been proclaimed their scapegoat. But there was scapegoating of a different kind all over the Twitter-waves following the match; some of the vitriol aimed at Rhys Williams, our once undroppable club captain, was unbelievable.

It’s far too easy to say "oh yeah, if Jozsef Varga had played at right-back we would have won" when the strength of AK's rebuilding plan has come from, in my opinion, collective defending rather than individualism. It is perhaps unfortunate for Williams that it's not the quantity of his slip-ups and behaviour that seems to be the problem, but the quality; I suspect that had he concluded a great run with an equally great finish to match and/or at least acknowledged the fans at the end, a lot might have been forgiven.

Mentality, obviously, is everything too. I believe that the team were as astonished as we fans were at being 2-0 up so soon. Hence our expectations were raised to a level that, in the end, we found unable to cope with. Some football writers, like the aforementioned Jared Browne, argue that if teams can play so well in one game, why can they not be encouraged to do so more consistently?

But Browne and his ilk conveniently ignore that expectation plays a major part in dictating how a team plays. It is much easier to play well when the pressure's off; when you are performing under par, and would like to win a game above all else, it is necessary to batten down the hatches. Grind out the result. The Bolton match showed that AK's "New Boro" are very nearly capable of doing that more often; but not quite.

Our little "reality check" may go a long way against Hull, after all.

(Originally published online at Middlesbrough's Evening Gazette.)

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