One of the biggest challenges any football person – be he or she a fan, a writer, a player, a manager or a chairperson – faces, after a season packed to the brim with what if's, if only's and happy memories ends on what feels like the saddest note of them all, is this: how do you regroup, recharge and brace yourself for the task that lies ahead, knowing that everything that's happened could be just as spirit-crushing as revitalising?
I was as devastated as any of you when Mike Dean got ready to blow the final whistle on both the play-off final and Boro's hopes of promotion in 2014-15. For what seemed like quite a while, I sat there with my head in my hands, and not a word was spoken or written as I came to terms with the harsh reality of a season that promised everything ultimately amounting to nothing.
But I am prioritising reflection over sentiment. I cannot, and I will not, dwell on near misses, stories of injustice and hard luck stories. They happen for every club. Everything adds up over the course of a season. It would be far too easy to point fingers at the two defeats to rivals Leeds that were hardly deserved, the dropped points against Blackburn, or two points out of twelve, and a solitary goal, against the two automatically promoted teams.
You could just as easily point to the one point from four games against Sheffield Wednesday and Reading. There is no guarantee that Boro would have gone up automatically had they taken six points, not two, from the Blackburn games. Nor is it certain that Boro would have gotten all the right results if Daniel Ayala, and later Patrick Bamford, hadn't succumbed to injury. Teams adjust and try to improve according to their rivals' results, their own disappointing results, and their own injuries. That's football.
It comes down to how one looks at it. Some may look back on the season as a whole and acknowledge that Boro were simply found wanting when it mattered most, that they just fell short at the final hurdle against superior opposition. Others may refuse to accept that Boro's class of 2014-15 were simply not good enough to win promotion, let alone the Championship, however attainable both aims may have once seemed.
Yet the fact is, painful though it is to admit it, Alex Neil's Norwich made Boro look ordinary. And for those who believed that there was no way Boro could not go up after that Jolly January, that was an extremely bitter pill to swallow. The season's magnificent memories, which were aplenty, were temporarily replaced by something akin to the post-Eindhoven hangover, a year's work seemingly wiped out in a matter of minutes, the brave Boro heroes being outclassed, out fought and outplayed.
The hidden fear of Aitor Karanka's over reliance on composure, control and clean sheets exploded into a plodding and painful reality on a Bank Holiday Monday. It was a problem evident from the very beginning of the season. As far back as Boro's 1-0 defeat to Leeds last August, the team had exhibited a preference for stylishly imposing a platform of dictation on their way to victory. Later on in the season, early goals, extremely stingy defending, or both, would tend to lead to memorable wins.
All of those things were on display at Wembley – from the team in yellow! Sebastian Bassong was everything Daniel Ayala normally is and a little bit more, a tower of strength with great positional sense and a muscular build. Ayala himself will be remembered for the wrong reasons, his gamble on Mike Dean awarding a free kick that never game horribly backfiring. Whether Dean was wrong or not is irrelevant. Footballers have a responsibility to play to the whistle, and Ayala didn't, opening the door for a slightly unexpected Cameron Jerome opener and a heartbreaking second from Nathan Redmond not long after.
We hoped that the team would summon the Spirit Of Steaua, that they would adapt to such unexpected setbacks. But this wasn't Brentford, Huddersfield or Blackpool. This was a Norwich side with plenty of Premiership experience, who had learned their lessons from losing twice to Boro in the league. They repeatedly marked in trios or quartets, squeezing the penetration out of Boro's passing and skilfully cutting off all supply to an isolated Patrick Bamford.
Boro had built a reputation on making strong attacks, especially Manchester City's, virtually redundant by not allowing them the time and space to do their thing, draining their confidence and gleefully poking holes in their defence. What felt most painful of all was Norwich's reversal of the roles: to put it simply, Alex Neil's side did a Boro on Boro.
Once again we had learnt the hard way that things were all well and good until Boro played a team good enough or pacy enough to rough them out of their rhythm, to upset their mentality. Heretical though this sounds, the tag of Boro's Clean Sheet Kings was both a blessing and a curse. We weren't so commanding when we didn't keep a clean sheet or didn't score the first goal.
We now face 2015-16 in a less certain state of mind. Everyone now knows how to play Boro. The stock of both the manager and certain players has risen; hungry vultures may be gearing up to swoop and put a spanner in Boro's works. Bamford, Dean Whitehead and Ryan Fredericks have already gone, and more will surely follow.
I can hear the voices. “Like Liverpool last year, we may never get a better chance than this to succeed...”, “We only had to draw against Watford and Bournemouth...”, “We've underachieved...”
Wait, hang on. “Underachieved”?
Looking at the final match of the season from another point-of-view suggests that Boro might have, in fact, overachieved a little. We actually have plenty to be proud of, as the Gazette writers and my fellow bloggers have rightly pointed out.
Behind the gloss of being managed by The Special One's Apprentice and attracting some big names of the future, albeit on loan, it should also be remembered that Aitor Karanka is only in his first full season, and the majority of most of the squad's experience is in the Football League. Being shown up as a slower and more ponderous version of Norwich during one game simply suggests something that Karanka may have known all along: pace was never going to be Boro's strongest point, so he prioritised faith, work rate, organisation, power, placement and control. True, we also lacked width and spontaneity, but there is nothing to suggest that these can't be worked upon in the close season.
Remember too that Boro's was the best defensive model in the division. That's “defensive model”, not just “defence.” By sticking to this blueprint, Boro will retain the foundations for a promotion campaign no matter who remains in charge of the Riverside. Or who plays.
A properly prepared model is everything. It took Southampton seven years to return to the top flight, but along with Swansea, they are arguably enjoying the most consistent level of success out of all the teams promoted to the Premier League since 2010. This despite a relatively frequent changeover of managerial and playing personnel.
What Boro proved in 2014-15, and Karanka would surely agree with this, is that they were almost, but not quite, good enough for promotion. It is time for Boro to appreciate their achievements and push on rather than lament on a “near-miss”. For appreciation encourages improvement, and the chance for Boro to expand the methods that have served them so well recently into something more expressive. That way, the season will not be thought of as a missed opportunity, but a learning experience.
Here's to that. And Up The Boro!
(Originally published online at GazetteLive on June 4, 2015.)
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