Wednesday 12 February 2014

Plan Bs and "The Curse Of Boro Loanees"

The Karankanaut has hit a stumbling block...



Last week, it became apparent that the honeymoon was over for Aitor Karanka. And even a much improved showing against Blackburn could not hide the fact that we have now gone the equivalent of nearly five matches without scoring. One defeat in five and four clean sheets sounds impressive, until you look at the flip side and realise that the team has only managed one win and one goal in those five.

Following the dour draw against Doncaster, the until-recently-upbeat Twitterverse and blogosphere were loaded with complaints and concerns from worried Boro fans. And they were all very valid.

Once, the team scored goals for fun but leaked them like a sieve. Now we're watertight, but we've forgotten how to score; and a lack of goals and entertainment will keep both Riverside attendances and AK's spending money low. The manager's tactics have been sussed. Ben Gibson, Richie Smallwood and Jason Steele, whose hearts are with the club, have been mistreated when they should be properly nurtured.

Three of our last four league matches provided naysayers with plenty of ammunition to support these points. Unlike the teams we defeated during our still recent great run, Leicester, Wigan and Doncaster proved fully capable of shutting us out. They appeared to recognise that Emmanuel Ledesma, the inside flanks and our wing men were, and still are, the primary source of most Boro goals and worked at sewing them up, cutting off their supply and nullifying their presence.

A fearful glance into what will now definitely be a post-Shay Given future indicates the possibility of an irreversible slump once our one true defensive leader is taken back by Aston Villa. A rational glance into the more recent past indicates that our new found balance and solidity has become both a blessing and a curse. Our concerns arose as part of elevated expectations that simply weren’t in place pre-Millwall.

One cannot blame AK. He is still a managerial novice finding his feet on these shores, but knows that the foundations of a successful side must be built from the back to start with. Boro's "over-conservatism", if that's what you want to call it, is actually quite common in the modern game, where fear of losing often overtakes the dare to win. The money in the game is too great, the league status too important, for the Crystal Palaces of 1995 and the Boros of 1997 to be as commonplace as they once were. (Pompey's FA Cup finalists of 2010, Birmingham's League Cup winners of 2011, and Wigan's FA Cup winners of 2013 are slight exceptions to the rule.)

Is it possible that the team became too focused on righting defensive wrongs at the expense of amplifying attacking rights? Maybe, but it is equally likely that Boro fell, once again, into the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" pattern. Freefalls are frequent with Boro, and the most common reason is our “winning formula” being found out.

To panic, or not to panic? Answer, especially after the more determined Blackburn performance: Not to panic.

Yes, it is disappointing not to have landed Given for longer, let alone permanently. He himself wanted to stay. But has AK's temporary use of Given really piled pressure on Steele? In my opinion: No! If that genuinely was the case, why on earth did Mogga sign Paul Smith and Carl Ikeme, two other temporary goalkeeping measures that benefitted both Boro and Steele? It isn't AK's fault, nor is it really ours, that Given has effectively been idolised; we really needed a hero, and Given fit the bill. We now have an excuse if our slight chance of the play-offs vanishes altogether after February; it is to AK's credit that he is trying to vanquish this with his "almost no I in team" approach. I say "almost" because he knows he still needs our individual wing quality and more attacking prowess in the centre.

Accusations that AK is undermining the progress of Gibson and Smallwood don't quite wash with me. There is much Gibson can learn from the arrival of Kenneth Omeruo and Nathaniel Chalobah. And because Smallwood is a local lad, he has been forgiven a lot, even several passes going astray. He is such a willing trier that it's easy to ignore the additional qualities of our other midfielders: Chalobah, Grant Leadbitter, Dean Whitehead and Jacob Butterfield.

Our boss hasn't been sitting around doing nothing. Logic suggests that Lee Tomlin and Danny Graham are steps in the right direction. Tomlin should be more bullish and more at home at this level than Marvin Emnes, and Graham should almost certainly outscore Jutkiewicz. I would, however, warn Boro fans not to expect too much from the returning "prodigal son". Even his best strike rate, at Watford, is good rather than spectacular: 38 league goals in 91 games over two seasons, with just 14 in his first 46.


There is a very effective Plan B that AK can settle on.

Start with the now typical 4-2-3-1, then, if all is not going so well, revert to a 4-2-1-2-1 with a diamond of an attacking spine. The holding midfielders can remain in place and the full backs can be allowed the freedom to roam when the situation calls for it.

Every single one of our four central players is capable in the "holding" position, with Butterfield and Leadbitter, Tomlin and Ledesma able to play behind the front man, and two of Ledesma, Muzzy Carayol, Albert Adomah and Kei Kamara playing on the wings. Even without Curtis Main, whose form might well have dipped because he knows he's almost certainly in the team by default rather than on form, we still have Kamara and Graham to choose from up front.

Unfortunately, rules dictate that we can only select five of Given, Graham, Omeruo, Chalobah, Tomlin or Joszef Varga in any match day squad; who would you prefer? Who would AK prefer?

And what to do, now Daniel Ayala has become the latest player to fall prey to the Curse Of The Boro Loanee; the loaned player who impresses at Boro, earns a permanent deal, then gets injured soon after and is never the same again? (See: Gaizka Mendieta and Jonathan Woodgate.)

It would be easy to put this down as another Typical Boro curse. But I believe that it will only become a curse if our fear of failure as a result of the injury turns it into one. What will define us here is our adaptability. Recall how injuries to Marco Branca and Alun Armstrong, and later the exit of Paul Merson, opened the door unexpectedly for Mikkel Beck and Hamilton Ricard to show what they could do (at least until Robbo signed Brian Deane).

And what price Massimo Maccarone writing his name into Boro folklore if Gareth Southgate hadn't gotten injured midway through the first half of that Steaua match? We turned a potentially bad situation to our advantage and made history. Yes, it was a wing and a prayer job – but it worked.

Too often, we like to believe outside forces are the causes of all our problems. But sometimes, misfortunes just happen, and we should learn to deal with them. We should be more open to different kinds of Plan Bs. We should be realistic, not losing sight of the long-term situation in our need for instant gratification. And we should be relaxed. Who, for example, saw the 4-0 win over Doncaster coming? It was, paraphrasing JM Barrie, a night where we expected to write one story: but ended up writing another.

(An older version of this piece was originally published online at the Evening Gazette on February 7, 2014.)

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