The Final Countdown... Keys To Success At Wembley For Aitor Karanka's Lads

Boro's big day, perhaps the biggest of all, is getting nearer, hour by hour, minute by minute. The nerves and excitement inside every fan of this proud football club are rising to what must breaking point as the £120 million Wembley challenge approaches.

The Championship Play-Off Final. It hasn't been as big as this for Boro since, well, the UEFA Cup Final in Eindhoven, and that was nearly a decade ago. Time really waits for no one. At once we are equally fearful and equally cheerful ahead of a match that does not seem more equally balanced than this.

We are facing a Norwich side managed by Alex Neil, the 33-year-old Championship managerial darling of the moment. The Canaries have not lost a single game away from home throughout his reign. And there's no such thing as Typical Norwich. While Boro may well feel burdened by years of historical near misses, Neil's men claim to be treating this like any other game, as if there is no pressure on them whatever happens. A 20% success rate in cup finals post-1995 doesn't exactly bode well for Boro either, with Cardiff in 2004 being an exception rather than the rule.

But, as my friend and fellow Boro fan Paul Ahdal has pointed out, Norwich have failed to score against Boro this season, both league games ending in 4-0 (albeit under Neil Adams) and 1-0 (albeit rather unluckily) Boro victories respectively. Additionally, Norwich's Nathan Redmond has labelled both wins "lucky", stating that his club have the better players. Perfect motivation for Aitor Karanka, who has shown, time and time again, that he doesn't do Typical Boro.

And as for Neil... the question remains. Is he truly a brilliant manager or is he simply riding the crest of a wave, basking in the glow of a honeymoon period that a top notch Championship squad have contributed to? Memories of how Stuart Pearce very nearly guided Manchester City into Europe at Boro's expense in 2005 come to mind; although Boro had been in the driving seat for much of the season, as they have been this season, Pearce's City found the right, revitalising momentum at just the right time to take the battle right to the wire. Less a case of managerial magic and more of a team unified behind the cause, if you ask me.

Boro approach Wembley with a bit of both, in the perfect state of mind to take on their formidable Championship challengers. Here, in my view, are a "magnificent" seven keys to Boro succeeding tomorrow.

MAKING ATMOSPHERE COUNT. As the Gazette's Anthony Vickers has put it, we don't want another Eindhoven where a day's worth of partying and drinking left Boro fans outsung by the Sevilla fans in the stand. And Boro's team were ruthlessly outfought and outclassed by Juande Ramos's side. We simply can't let that happen again.

We're not going to get a Giants Stadium circa 1994, where the first round match between Ireland and Italy in New York saw observers feast their eyes on a cascade of green with Italians nowhere to be seen. But we've got to try. We've got to make our voices heard tomorrow for the right reasons. And judging by what I've seen in photos from Trafalgar Square tonight, we can do it.

JELLE VOSSEN. The Belgian's goals, or lack of them in contrast to goalden boy Patrick Bamford, have become secondary to his value as a supply striker. His persistence and good footwork is the perfect compliment to either Bamford or Kike. If Vossen and one of Boro's two other forwards combines well, Boro will play well.

LEE TOMLIN. Like the Brazilian Ronaldo, he has been mocked for being overweight. But "Tomlinho" is a man for the biggest stages of all - his turn at the Etihad and his brilliantly taken strike in the semi-final second leg are proof of this - and more miracles are possible.

THE SPINE. Dimi Konstantopoulos. Daniel Ayala. Ben Gibson. Grant Leadbitter. Adam Clayton. The central players, the engines of the side, the inspirations to all of those around them are the main reason why Boro have had such a mean defensive record this season. Their ability to keep things tight and keep things ticking over while the likes of Albert Adomah, Tomlin, Vossen, Kike, Bamford or even Adam Reach do their magic will be paramount. And let's not forget George Friend either....

DOING IT FOR MOGGA. It's easy to forget that nine of the fourteen players who played against Brentford in our last match were either signed or developed by Tony Mowbray and Mark Venus; the local heroes' invaluable contribution to the Karankanaut should not be cast aside. If that can't help inspire the lads on the pitch tomorrow to "do it for Teesside", I don't know what can.

KIKE. I know that the temptation to recall Patrick Bamford will bein Karanka's mind, but I genuinely think that allowing the £2.7 million signing to keep his place will be his best bet. While Bamford is only just recovering from an injury and has not scored since the 2-1 win over Wolves, Kike is fit, firing and surely in the mood to do more damage after that beautifully taken goal against Brentford. Mood defines many a striker's momentum; I think starting Kike is a risk worth taking.

THE CORRECT PSYCHOLOGICAL MENTALITY. Boro have already shown that they can adapt to going a goal down. But the final battle in this long war will surely be psychological. Here's why.

Back in January, at the Etihad, Boro were able to adopt a "Nothing To Lose, Everything To Win" mentality. With less pressure of expectation, the team were less inhibited, and simply focused on going out there and giving it their best. They knew that there was something to fall back on even in defeat, and, once they realised Manchester City were there for the taking, both belief and composure enhanced, paving the way for a deserved triumph.

Tomorrow, the expectations will be much higher in an atmosphere of no second chances, an atmosphere with big prizes of enhanced status and much more money at stake. As a certain Nigel once put it on Anthony Vickers' UntypicalBoro blog, it is a situation where "all we have to win" becomes "all we have to lose".

And, as he added, such negativity can drain the power from players, filling them with uncertainty and damaging the team pattern. This, in turn, transmits itself to the crowd, who are weighed down by the prospect of ending up as The Nearly Men.

Boro can't let this happen to them at Wembley.

And, knowing both Aitor Karanka and the team, they won't. There is enough of a positively charge around to suggest that this gifted coach and his well-organised charges are truly up to the task ahead of them tomorrow.

Need I say I'm now looking forward to it?

Here's to a wonderful Wembley experience.

Up The Boro! Read more...

Aitor Karanka, His Influences And The Men Behind The Men

Si's Insights welcomes Boro's first "continental" head coach - and speculates on what fans can, and should, expect from him

Photo: Evening Gazette

When I first heard that Aitor Karanka, Jose Mourinho's No. 2 at Real Madrid – let's repeat that, The Special One's No. 2 at Real Madrid – was to become Boro's new Head Coach, I was both excited and optimistic at the same time.

Many Boro fans and writers, notably John Powls, found very little to get excited about before Karanka's appointment, and you can't really blame them.

No matter which coach sits in the Riverside hot seat, we are the flatterers to deceive to rule them all, always the next big thing, never the actual big thing.

A little like the Spanish national team before Luis Aragones' team lost in Belfast, then dropped Raul, started to build the team around Xavi and became the "tiki-takites", the World Champions and double Euro Champs we know and mostly love today.

Am I indicating a hopeful parallel here? Perhaps. But we'll return to that when we analyse Karanka and his influences.

Our last game against Watford, and indeed, the games leading up to it, were the epitome of the glass half full-glass half empty mentality that is emerging in relation to our performances this season.

Were your glass half full, you would focus on our dominant attacking play versus the Hornets, the fact that we've only failed to score in two games this season, that we've scored the third highest amount of goals in the league, that we've only lost one third of our matches, that our team is full of attacking potential, and that Reading won the Championship in 2012 despite having a similar record after their first fifteen matches.

Were your glass half empty, you would focus on our horrific defending, our number of clean sheets (two!), the fact that we've only won one fifth of our games, that potential and actually doing the job are very different things, and the lack of a consistent, dependable spine; which, in turn, will always result in more draws or defeats than victories.

Mark Venus' short managerial tenure is hardly the worst – an unbeaten home record, only three goals conceded in three games, the biggest win of the season (and year) and the biggest home crowd.

But of course that does not tell the full story. The very lack of presence in this decent man, this able tactician, illustrates that despite all his qualities, he cannot envisage a promotion challenge for this team even if it is still possible. And we know it is; recall when, at the spur of an early goal, the players lost all inhibitions, expressed themselves superbly and humiliated Doncaster.

What I, as a fan and writer, expect from Karanka, is for him to prove that he is more than The Man Behind The Man; the tactician behind the motivator, or vice versa, one of whom normally cannot exist without the other.

Mourinho's managerial achievements at the Bernabeu hint that Karanka's tactical ability is not in question, but is he a strong enough motivator? Is he enough of a visionary? And will he choose to build on the positives already inherent in the Boro system, or reshape the whole system in his own image?

Mauricio Pochettino's success at Southampton – under Nigel Adkins, the Saints were combative and engaging, but under Pochettino they are a joy – gives us every reason to believe this gamble might just pay off. But there is another side to this coin, one that may not be so appealing after all.

Lest we become over excited by Karanka's resume and the exciting parallels with Aragones and Pochettino, it is worth remembering that he played his international football under Javier Clemente, a manager who was renowned more for "faith" and "hard work" (qualities from the Basque Country, where he selected many of his players from) than a truly expansive style. Under Clemente, Spain were successful, at one stage going 31 matches unbeaten, but throughout his reign it became clear that he could only take the national team so far. This is the kind of manager that former Real coach Jorge Valdano has little time for, the sort whose lack of success as players led them to "channel all their vanity into coaching" – and he includes Mourinho in that category.

Coaches like these are what I'd call "systematic". They earn praise for trophies, good results, tactics and studying the opposition, which is all well and good, even great. But it is perfectly possible for a manager to achieve much by telling his players less about the opposition and allowing them to be more expressive on the pitch, in the same way a manager can tell his team a lot about how to play and who they will be playing, yet not achieve as much. In the same way success does not always equate with greatness, receiving information does not always equate with expressiveness. Systematic coaches may achieve great things to a point, but they are more likely to be found out eventually. The best coaches, and we have to hope Karanka falls into this bracket, can improvise and adapt when the situation calls for it in addition to being systematic.

Some will argue that Mourinho has learned to improvise more with time, with his new, seemingly more exciting Chelsea team proof of this. But it can also be argued that he is still overly dependent on the Cech-Terry-Lampard spine and that players left over from the previous regime such as Hazard, Oscar and Ramires have forced him to improvise. I can never forget how, during his first spell at Chelsea, he relied extremely heavily on the "soak 'em up and hit 'em when they least expect it" tactic; that is, until we memorably humbled him and the team on that glorious (-ly unexpected) February afternoon in 2006. He also struggled when the hierarchy began to meddle with the team; under Mourinho, it was less a question of the player's quality and more a question of whether or not he would fit into the manager’s system.

Returning to Karanka, all my analysis indicates that far more questions than answers surround our new Head Coach, but we have every reason to be optimistic. Here's hoping our optimism is not unfounded.

(This piece originally appeared online at the Evening Gazette website on November 19, 2013.) Read more...

If It Ain't Broke...

Last week, at Ewood Park, we learned that Mark Venus wasn't Boro's saviour after all. But then, we never really expected him to be.

What is of concern is that once again, we have no idea where this team is going.

No longer spurred on by the sad failure of a local hero and more than 20,000 loyal supporters, Boro failed to pressurise Blackburn Doncaster-style and went home empty handed.

That was disappointing.

But what was worse was seeing the superb all out attacking formula that worked to perfection against Doncaster replaced by a "safety first" defensive approach, the sort that is more about gaining a point rather than dropping two.

And so, the question remains. Veno is a good coach and organiser who has fostered team spirit and restored leadership, to an extent. But is he the right man for Boro? His defensive line-up, in addition to his midweek claim that the Boro squad was not capable of a promotion challenge, both ruffled feathers and suggests that he lacks vision. That he is capable of stabilising the club, but no more; something that will cut no dice with too many of the Boro faithful.

With Blackburn so close to Boro in the table last week, was there really a need to restore Jozsef Varga to the Boro starting XI so soon, regardless of his effectiveness as a holding midfielder? Moving Grant Leadbitter to the right nullified his anchorman credentials and forced Richie Smallwood to readjust to an unfamiliar midfield partner.

Dropping Muzzy Carayol left us overreliant on the in-form Albert Adomah; if he didn't have an off day, which Marvin Emnes certainly did, it is quite possible that Blackburn boss Gary Bowyer studied the Doncaster win and worked hard to nullify the Adomah threat, thus exposing a Typical Boro weakness: once the team finds a reliable source of attacks (see: Juninho, Paul Merson, Stewart Downing, Adam Johnson and so on), the opposition eventually finds us out by cutting off his supply.

Furthermore, Veno's decision to play two attacking presences down the left flank made Boro more vulnerable. And while Friend possesses a certain flair, he's not the Championship Franck Queudrue that he seemingly aspires to be. Veno had the right idea by playing Ben Gibson on the left as defensive cover for Adomah (Mick McCarthy used a similarly effective tactic with Ian Harte and Kevin Kilbane while in charge of Ireland); watching him go back on his own logic was baffling.

Fans will argue that we did not concede until after Varga was substituted for Carayol, but it is probable that had we been set up to play a more penetrative attacking or at least counter-attacking game earlier, then the concession might not have mattered. Yes, it would have been more fraught with risk, in a manner worthy of Tony Mowbray's inconsistent 2012-13 brigade; but when on top of their game Mogga's Men were genuinely classy. Recall last year's game at the same venue where two superb Lukas Jutkiewicz strikes rendered a late Blackburn goal irrelevant. Sometimes, it's tempting to argue that consistency is overrated.

To declare that the squad is "not good enough" for promotion is undeniably going too far. Reading, after all, won just four of their first fifteen games in 2011-12 and finished as champions.

Cynics might also argue that Veno is minimising a potential backlash against him should anything else go wrong.

But a closer look reveals a ring of truth in his words - perhaps it is not the strength of the squad that's problematic, but the structure. It's full of promise and potential, to be sure, but who plays, where and at who's expense? For example, Jacob Butterfield can offer a lot in midfield, but at the expense of a revitalized Smallwood; and that's just one of numerous unanswered questions.

Let's hope that at least some of them are answered when we've finished playing Watford.

(Photo: www.mfc.co.uk). Read more...

Why Mogga Ran Out Of Luck... And Is Venus The Answer?

In many ways, Boro's 4-0 triumph over Doncaster Rovers this day last week made me sad.

It was as typical an illustration of Bipolar Boro as you could have imagined. Six days prior, Tony Mowbray's last Boro XI had crashed 3-2 at bottom of the table Barnsley and looked like a team going nowhere.

Steve Gibson took action. Local hero Mogga was on his way. Caretaker manager Mark Venus, a lifelong Boro fan himself, stepped into the hotseat.

Cue three points, a clean sheet, and four very well taken goals, all scored past Ross "I'm too big for Boro" Turnbull in front of more than 20,000 Riversiders and the Sky cameras. To paraphrase our beleaguered ex-manager, it was what it was... a handful of changes both in the dugout and on the pitch had turned unwatchable Boro into unbeatable Boro.

But is this anything new?

The parallels between Gareth Southgate's and Tony Mowbray's Boro reigns, respectively, are quite staggering. Both were legendary leaders on the pitch who were not capable of replicating their qualities in the managerial dugout.

Yet both men were really up against it from the very moment they became Boro boss. Succeeding managers who had taken tremendous management opportunities, spent Boro's money and left the club for the worse, Gate and Mogga found themselves working with more limited resources than their most recent predecessors, mainly because of the need to try and balance the books. More than that, both began their final season attempting to bounce back from wretched freefalls that neither man seemed to have the answers to.

Southgate’s final teams, however, still had that aura of "bouncebackability" about them. Their Premier League experience, to an extent, intimidated a number of opposition sides, and kept them positioned amongst the best teams in the Championship, at least for a handful of games. While the end of Mogga's tenure may have been characterised by the same lack of leadership, the same inconsistent tactics and the same unbreachable rift between manager and fans, it was also characterised by more meagre resources and a lack of truly classy players; something that even Southgate could claim to be less undermined by, as Adam Johnson repeatedly proved.

Mogga's 2011 "transformation" of Boro, which was really more about making Strachan's Bore-o an aberration and restoring the club's identity, was actually originally built on the goal scorers, leadership and solidity left over from both Southgate and Strachan. Key to Mogga's early success were the goals of Leroy Lita (a Southgate signing), the Strachan spine of Stephen McManus, Nicky Bailey, Barry Robson and Scott McDonald, and the re-invention of Andy Taylor as an attacking midfielder. Both Taylor and Lita would depart by the end of Mogga's first season, with Robson, McManus, Bailey and McDonald eventually following suit. Over time, Mogga would try, and fail, to replace them with his own spine; as key remnants of the previous regime ebbed away, with the exception of Jason Steele and Marvin Emnes, so too did the self-belief Mogga had initially restored to the club.

The local hero's two full seasons in charge followed similar patterns. To be frank, if we were to have any chance of going up in 2011-12 or 2012-13, we had to be the surprise team that upset the apple cart, that sneaked into the promotion race amidst the strongest teams in the division (see: Reading in 2012, Hull in 2013). Because neither of our squads were strong enough. In both seasons, we exhausted our luck and graft at the wrong time, and it was only a lack of draws (plus "unlucky" and "wasteful" defeats at Cardiff and Birmingham, to name but a couple), that kept our promotion pretence intact at the end of 2012. What we arguably didn't realise at the time was that Mogga was filling the squad with more potential match winners, but slowly ripping apart our dependable spine in the process.

It initially looked like Mogga had the mentality to bounce back from truly wretched setbacks (contrast the haunting late concessions against Doncaster, Leeds and Burton Albion with the spectacular if meaningless end to 2010-11). But over time, his managerial ethos regressed. Once upon a time, he had been able to take what was good about Strachan and build on it by giving youth a chance. Tony McMahon, Joe Bennett, Adam Reach, Cameron Park, Curtis Main, Luke Williams and Richard Smallwood were among the "kids" that looked like they could really prosper under Mogga. Today, both McMahon and Bennett have left the club, and the rest just haven't seemed to improve. It is possible that in his increasing desperation to appease the faithful by trying to maximise results and provide excitement, Mogga had forgotten to pay attention to players' development. That is never a good thing.

Many overly systematic coaches (especially Strachan) have been criticised for not allowing their players to optimise their strengths, but finding a system, a means by which the players can organise, inspire and complement each other, is equally important. It is not a question of being systematic; it is a question of finding the right system, one that strikes a balance between expressionism and organisation.

And Mogga failed to do so. For example, when he handed Rhys Williams the captaincy and tried to solidify him in a centre back role, was the manager restricting the player's ability, particularly when "Rolls Rhys" had evidently thrived as a midfield playmaker? Placing Williams and Jonathan Woodgate, two classy, temperamental ball-players, alongside one another was never really going to work as a dependable centre-back partnership, especially with Woodgate past his best and, like Williams, prone to injury.

The consensus that Strachan filled us with too many workmanlike, "do the job" players, making Boro about as exciting as watching paint dry, is a valid one, but towards the end of his reign Mogga was going too far in the other direction. When looking at a typical Mogga XI, you saw "artists" and "goal scorers", or, worse still, players who thought they could be artists and goal scorers. George Friend is better remembered for his goals and marauding runs rather than his defensive prowess. The likes of Marouane Zemmama, Emmanuel Ledesma, Faris Haroun, Malaury Martin have been flickering, enigmatic presences. Ditto Lukas Jutkiewicz and Marvin Emnes, unplayable on their best days but workmanlike, sulky and uninspired on their worst. At least Grant Leadbitter, Muzzy Carayol, Albert Adomah and Kei Kamara have virtually become cult heroes.

Most damning of all for Mogga, if you leave aside the mob rule that played a major part in forcing his (and Southgate's) exit, was that by his reign's end, his team did not easily pick itself. Kamara or Jutkiewicz up front? Jozsef Varga, Dean Whitehead, Jacob Butterfield or Leadbitter in midfield? Gibson, Hines, Woodgate or Rhys Williams in the centre of defence? He no longer appeared to know where this team was going or what they should be doing, and neither did we.

We needed someone new to come in, stop the rot, get the team organised and believe in themselves again; and Mark Venus appears to have done just that in his first game.

What helped Venus no end was the sentiment from those in the crowd who had gathered to pay their respects to the departed local hero; it was, after all, his team who were on the pitch. With Boro no longer pressurised by the mob or the need to save their manager, they relaxed and pulled their best performance of 2013 out of the hat. Of course, some will wonder just how different things might have been if Jutkiewicz had taken his chances against Barnsley or if Mogga had signed Daniel Ayala in time, but that's life. And football.

There's no denying Venus is a good organiser, a good coach, but is he the right manager for Boro? Being a good tactician is all very well, but you also have to be a good motivator, an inspirational figurehead; qualities that do not yet seem fully apparent in Venus. Perhaps we will see them at Blackburn, or maybe beyond, if Steve Gibson gives him a chance to be more than "the man behind the man".

Returning to Mogga, my final thoughts following his departure are loaded with regret. In many ways he appeared the ideal manager for us – a man with a vision who lived and breathed Boro.

It was only unfortunate that his vision ultimately proved misguided.

(Photos: Evening Gazette/Getty Images). Read more...