Wembley Heartbreak Must Be A Springboard For Greater Achievements

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.) Read more...

Gunned Down Boro Must Look Back Up

Let's start with a little trip down memory lane.

I still remember when a Boro fan from Stockton wrote into the now defunct football weekly 90 Minutes to state that the magazine ought to revise their prediction of 11th for the infamous class of 1996-97.

The fan was convinced that Curtis Fleming, Steve Vickers and Robbie Mustoe were quality players of the highest level (which is clearly overdoing it, love them though we do) and that Boro had earned the right to be classified as potential treble challengers (which was really overdoing it, love that though we would have).

Yet you couldn't blame him for getting excited. For he wrote that letter in the middle of September 1996, when we had recorded four straight victories, conceding just two goals and scoring a remarkable nineteen. Even if fifteen of those goals came against then fourth tier Hereford United and two struggling Premier League sides who would ironically survive at our expense.

Then, as 90 Minutes' reply put it, poor Vickers “gifted three points to the Arsenal” as Boro were comfortably swept away in a 2-0 defeat to the Gunners. Being the second highest scorers in the league with eleven goals at the Riverside had counted for little against a strong side who closed down our foreign legion brilliantly and poked holes in our defence. Struggling Southampton did the exact same at The Dell the following week and our league form began its downward spiral.

Something similar is extremely unlikely to happen today, particularly with our foundations being much stronger (albeit almost wholly in second tier football), but I couldn't help but get deja vu at the final whistle on Sunday. Marching into the Emirates on the back of SIX successive victories, with twelve scored, just three conceded and a great triumph at the home of the Premier League Champions in the bag, we had every reason to feel confident.

Perhaps overconfident. The talk in the run up to the game, especially from the broadsheets, was of Towering Totem Tomlinho taking down the Gunners and Aitor Karanka claiming another Premier League scalp. Now, no one's doubting Lee Tomlin's ability or his improvement under Karanka, but come on; one great turn and shot against City and he's suddenly England's Next Great Hope? Please.

It's easy to say in hindsight, but perhaps AK, Tomlin and Boro needed their bubble burst to put things in perspective and remind them that promotion really is the priority. And if one casts a more critical eye over that great Etihad victory, one will find that City were going through a barren spell of just one league win in six, with a home draw and a near home defeat against struggling Burnley and Hull respectively.

By contrast, since losing at Stoke in December, Arsenal had won ten out of thirteen league and cup games prior to facing Boro. Not that this would deter Boro - “so much for the form book” is an often-uttered cliché – but this in-form Arsenal team were an entirely different beast to an out-of-form City.

This was not Eastlands, where Boro were able to match City's patient, pressing passing game with extremely stingy defending, penetrating midfield breaks and moments of Tomlin magic. Hampered by additional and unwanted nerves stemming from increased expectations and a raised profile, Boro found themselves feeling the full force of Arsene Wenger's classy collective from the very first whistle.

Inspired by the brilliant Santi Cazorla, the Gunners burst out of the blocks at a high tempo and, once Olivier Giroud's brace had established their lead, comfortably saw the game out, threatening to add to their margin of victory through a mixture of calm possession and penetrative, visionary passing.

It felt like tiki-taka with a difference, a combination of playmakers and match-winners who dreamed to dare, and effectively silenced the opposition's own attack through graceful dictation rather than dogged defending. If Boro weren't a threat, it wasn't so much because they limply folded. It was more because their style of play and mentality were not geared to take the Gunners on at their own game.

Arsenal's calm assertion took its toll on the entire Boro team, barring the excellent Tomas Mejias. Tomlin was virtually invisible, and Jelle Vossen and Kike fared little better. Grant Leadbitter, Adam Clayton and Patrick Bamford were all negligible as attacking threats, with Bamford really feeling the pressure from having to repeatedly drop deep to try and win the ball.

Even Boro's central defensive pairing were not as impressive as we hoped they'd be, Kenneth Omeruo's wretched distribution and uneven positional sense casting a shadow over an otherwise determined display from the Nigerian.

To their credit, our flankers – particularly Ryan Fredericks, George Friend and substitute Adam Reach – battled gamely to inject life into a blunted Boro. Yet it was not Fredericks' cross and Kike's post-hitting header that lingered longest, but poor Albert Adomah's short run and shot that flew wide. He had tried, and failed, to recapture the Adomah of old, gradually left behind after AK reigned in the attacking instincts of our wide men in a successful bid to tighten us up.

Now, to a point, there's nothing wrong with that. Especially when it's part of a platform to contain opposition attacks and establish dictation. But what happens when the team comes up against a side with the sharpness to deny them control and the vision to pierce their back line? And what if you don't have the requisite pace to counter theirs? (Here's where AK gambling on Yanic Wildschut or Emilio Nsue might not have been such a bad bet.)

Another big question AK should ask his men is why, after having repeatedly proven themselves full of attacking options, Boro looked almost entirely out of ideas once Tomlin was snuffed out.

Yes, I know we were playing Arsenal in their own backyard. Yes, I know teams have off days. But that doesn't mean that the game can be just swept under the carpet as if it never happened. It's the “We got a bad result, but no problem, we'll get it right next time” attitude.

The team may very well get the right result next time. But that's not the point. The point is, the longer you paper over cracks, the more likely they are to come back and bite you in the proverbial... as Liverpool found out last year when Steven Gerrard slipped against Chelsea.

And as we may find out, if we don't pull ourselves together and set out to right the wrongs at Birmingham and during every match that follows.

Here's hoping for much better at St. Andrews.

(Originally published online at GazetteLive on February 17, 2015.) Read more...

Back In Time: Middlesbrough 0, Aston Villa 4, 1999/2000 - "The Valentine's Day Massacre"

It was one of my darkest days as a Boro fan; a game that arguably signalled that the Robson Revolution could go no further.

Prior to the match, a faltering Boro had sunk to new depths, taking just one point from fifteen in a dreadful run that admittedly included a commendable draw at Anfield and a narrow defeat at Old Trafford more famous for the inexcusable behaviour of the Manchester United players than any penalty miss or goalkeeping error.

On the flip side, we'd tamely surrendered 4-1 at Derby in our last home game, allowing a then unknown future Boro striker named Malcolm Christie to steal the limelight.

Few, if any, exciting new stars had arrived or were coming through the ranks.

We had the absence of first choice goalkeeper Mark Schwarzer, injuries to Brian Deane, Robbie Mustoe & Steve Vickers, and the suspension of key men, Hamilton Ricard and Christian Ziege, to deal with.

And now we were up against a good, professional side containing one past and *five* future Boro men - Paul Merson, Ugo Ehiogu, Gareth Southgate, George Boateng, Benito Carbone and Alan Wright. (Okay, the last one is clearly best forgotten about.)

Bryan Robson seemed at his wits end, and sent out what looked like a poorly-thought-through starting eleven.

Colin Cooper at left-back? Keith O'Neill, a winger, up front with Andy Campbell when a natural front man, Alun Armstrong, was wasting away on the bench? A volatile, enigmatic and clearly past-his-best Paul Gascoigne making his first start in two months?

It felt bad. It *was* bad. We just didn't anticipate how bad it was going to get.

Not surprisingly, we had no threat up front. Even more surprisingly, we carried virtually no threat in midfield, unless you count Gascoigne's elbow in Boateng's face. (How ironic that Gazza ended his Boro career by whacking a player who would be so much more of a Boro midfield totem than Gazza ever was.)

But, worse than that, Villa really did win a canter. They always looked like they had something extra in the tank, and even with a one-goal lead, never truly looked in danger.

Little wonder that Colin Cooper was almost in tears as he faced the Sky cameras. He surely wasn't the only one.

A side as uninspired and incohesive as Robson's that night were always going to be extremely vulnerable against a team like Aston Villa.

And although we went on to lose just twice more for the remainder of the season and finish comfortably in mid-table with 52 points (our second highest ever Premier League tally, just behind 2004-05) and six away wins (a Premier League record that Boro have repeatedly come close to matching, but never bettering), it was more from pluck than flair.

It was hardly the kind of football that would attract the right kind of big names to the club, or encourage key players to stay.

Recall the imminent arrival of the temperamental Christian Karembeu and the criminally overpaid, mostly disinterested Alen Boksic. And a very messy transfer saga involving our newly found German international hero was about to erupt...

(Originally published online at the Evening Gazette on February 14, 2014.) Read more...

Back In Time: Middlesbrough 6, Derby County 1, 1996-97

Boro's 6-1 victory over Derby County in March 1997 was a rather deceptive match. It's not that the victory wasn't deserved - it was. It's not that it wasn't Boro's biggest league win of the season - it was. It's not that it didn't feature Fabrizio Ravanelli's third Boro hat-trick - it did.

It's just that it's very easy to look back at the scoreline, the attendance - wow, a full Riverside! - and the foreign legion and think, what a magnificent occasion! Except it wasn't really.

In the run up to Ravanelli's first and second Boro hat-tricks, against Liverpool and Hereford respectively, Boro had marched into the matches on a tidal wave of optimism, created firstly by the summer signings and secondly by three successive league victories. By the time we faced Derby, there were only twelve league games left and two gruelling cup runs had taken their toll on a rather shallow squad. Worse still, we were five points adrift at the bottom of the Premiership. "Bottomsbrough", indeed.

The signs of improvement we had shown since the deduction of those three points, in a 4-2 win over Sheffield Wednesday, a 1-1 draw with Wimbledon and an extremely unlucky 1-0 defeat against Newcastle were undone by, in Bryan Robson's words, a return to the "bad old ways" in a 3-1 defeat to Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. Although Robbo had really not helped himself by reverting to his own "bad old" five at the back tactic in place of the more solid 4-4-2 that had proved to be much more effective.

At the time, I was willing to write off the match against Derby as another defeat before it had even begun. To me, even the arrival of Gianluca Festa and a young Mark Schwarzer had been falsely promising; the way Boro had played at Hillsborough on March 1, I was convinced that they could lose to anybody. Three wonderful weeks and four league victories later, Boro's season was transformed. And this was the game that kicked it off.

The win over Derby - Ravanelli's future club in addition to then future Boro boss Steve McClaren's current club (he was Rams boss Jim Smith's assistant manager before joining Big Nose at the Theatre Of Dreams in 1999) - was one of those games that showed you how any big win, regardless of how well the team plays on the day, can psychologically rally round a team and get them performing again. We weren't amazing here; Derby could have been at least two up in the first twenty minutes either side of Ravanelli's missed sitter, before popular Slovak Vladimir Kinder fired us ahead with a long-range effort that deceived Derby goalkeeper Russell Hoult.

The match was arguably a game of two goalkeepers, with Schwarzer's frame denying Dean Sturridge an equaliser minutes before Ravanelli's shot was helped into his own net by Hoult. If Schwarzer's presence was inspiring Boro, Hoult's was doing the exact opposite for Derby. The goalkeeper who had been so imperious when we'd faced him at the Baseball Ground in November 1996 had suddenly developed a severe case of the butterfingers. He trembled as both Craig Hignett and Mikkel Beck calmly stroked the ball past him, and handed Ravanelli's second goal to him on a plate before being rounded by The White Feather for the Italian's third goal - and Boro's sixth. Although to be fair to Hoult, the charity offered by the Derby defence to Boro's attack in the last ten minutes was more than a little shocking. It was as if they'd switched off following Hignett's goal, only coming to life again when Paul Simpson took the chance to deny Schwarzer a clean sheet with a stunning free kick.

It was hardly a model performance, but it was still a vital confidence boost that would set us in good stead to make progress in both cups and creep out of the relegation zone. Of course, such progress would come at a price; that Juninho-inspired week of wins later on in March would give Martin O'Neill something to think about before Wembley. But we were back on track - even if it did all end in tears. Read more...

So Long, Sir Alex

Opinions vary about Sir Alex Ferguson, but his managerial achievements speak for themselves. In a rare non-Boro related column, Si's Insights shows our appreciation for the Godfather of football managers

All Middlesbrough fans know that we have an enormous mountain to climb to reach the dizzy heights that we once took for granted. But we can do it. It may take many years, but we can still do it. And I personally don't believe that there's anyone better to learn from than the Godfather of football managers himself, Sir Alex Ferguson.

As the fiery Scot prepares to leave the managerial dugout once and for all, it may surprise some - if not all - that my respect for him has increased ten fold over the last decade.

Almost incredibly, a Manchester United fan was calling for "Mr. Magnificent" himself, Steve McClaren (!), to step into the United hot seat after United's 3-1 defeat to a then middling Manchester City in November 2002.

A question was asked by The Times then, and it has resonated with me to this very day:

“Has Ferguson got the drive, the energy to assemble a third great United team? Moreover, will he be given the time and money to do so?”

That game, and the awful goals United conceded in it, signalled a turning point for United. They lost just twice more throughout the rest of the season - and one of those defeats was at the Riverside! - on their way to clinching the league title.

Moreover, with Ole Gunnar Solksjaer making the right of midfield his own, the sale of David Beckham didn't seem that great a loss.

Unfortunately, by early 2004, it looked like it was. When United played FC Porto at Old Trafford, they were going through a very rough transitional period. Key players were either getting injured or losing form. Rio Ferdinand had been given an eight-month ban in an age where other players had been punished less for more. Then there was the whole "Rock Of Gibraltar" situation.

In the Porto game alone, they'd lost two players through injury and had a perfectly good goal ruled out. Even so, with seconds remaining, United were 1-0 up and set for the quarter-finals of the Champions League. Then Tim Howard's punch conveniently fell to Costinha, Jose Mourinho did that mad dance down the touchline, and... well, you know the rest.

Porto went on to win the Champions League, and Jose's Chelsea went on to dominate English football for the next two years.

But – and this is the biggest but – Ferguson could have given up.

In 2006, the London press appeared to, as Hugh McIlvanney correctly put it one year later, take undeniable pleasure in forecasting an undignified exit for Ferguson.

The press brazenly stated that Fergie no longer had it in him to add to all those titles. They also said that the team would suffer after selling Ruud Van Nistelrooy. They proclaimed that Chelsea were simply unbeatable.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Five titles and a European Cup followed in the next seven years. It could so easily have been seven titles. This is clear evidence that he did not give up. Instead, he did build a third great United team and went on to lay the initial foundations for a possible fourth.

Anyone who really wants to get back to the top after feeling like they've hit rock bottom can, and should, look no further for inspiration than from the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson. And that, more than any of his achievements, is why I think he is worthy of the accolades that have been, and will continue to be, bestowed upon him. Read more...

Back In Time: Everton 4, Middlesbrough 0, 1995/96

My first Boxing Day as a Boro fan... How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways.

When you think of Boro's infamous trouncing by Everton near the end of 1995, the best way to start is by looking at the build-up. Before Juninho made his debut (and snags with work permits had delayed it for a month,too), newly-promoted Boro, inspired by a packed Riverside, a solid defence marshalled by Nigel Pearson and the "midget gems" of Craig Hignett, Nick Barmby and Jan Aage Fjortoft, had risen to fourth in the Premiership table. It was enough to win any "neutral" football fan over - especially me. And the signing of Juninho seemed the icing on the cake.

Unfortunately the arrival of Boro's much loved "Little Fella" coincided with a run of form that, as Four Four Two put it in 1996, made "previously high flying Middlesbrough look more like Middle Yallop reserves." The signing of Juninho was the epitome of the best and worst of Boro in a nutshell - for all the joy, excitement and attention that signings like him offered, they also disrupted team spirit and organisation. His entrance into the 1995 vintage disrupted the attacking flow of the team; the "midget gems" were no more, as Bryan Robson struggled to figure out how to fit both Barmby and Juninho into the same team. In reality, both appeared to play better with Hignett - and he'd had to sacrifice his first team place to accommodate the little Brazilian.

Of course, that didn't matter while Boro prospered. Although Juninho arrived in the midst of a four game winless run (and the loss of Boro's unbeaten record at the Riverside), Boro still managed to turn on the style to beat title challengers Liverpool 2-1 and end the month in sixth place. This, in turn, sparked a revival in our fortunes, with four-goal home wins either side of a narrow loss to then champions Blackburn. It was enough to leave us in fifth place by Christmas, and had we beaten Everton on Boxing Day, we would have gone second.

But Boro, especially under Bryan Robson, tend to be built on rather shaky foundations, as if they are a time bomb ready to go off the moment something goes wrong. That "something" was a series of injuries - according to then physio Bob Ward, Boro had reached the dizzy heights of fourth by using just twelve players in the first eleven games, then had somehow stumbled through those injuries to remain at the heels of the title challengers by Christmas. The real breaking point, however, came when, according to Ward, there was a mix up over the travel arrangements and the kit didn't arrive until a matter of minutes before kick-off.

Everton then proceeded to condemn us to our heaviest defeat of the season. Craig Short, Graham Stuart (2) and a revitalised Andrei Kanchelskis got the goals in what was an embarrassingly one-sided encounter, featuring what was then uncharacteristically sloppy defending from the Boro. The concerns about what would happen if our defence had an off-day on the road were heightened here; we had scored only one goal in four away league matches prior to this one, and had carved out just one real chance in the entire match. And just when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it did - Juninho and Derek Whyte joined a growing treatment table that already featured Barmby and Hignett.

Robson wrote the game off as a "one-off" at the time, but it was anything but. We proceeded to win just seven of our next forty-four Premiership matches, a run that continued until a 6-1 win over Derby in March 1997. More importantly, the Everton thrashing was the clearest indication yet of Boro's vulnerability under pressure, a match that we could have and should have learnt our ultimate lesson from; yet today, as we continue to endure nervy match after nervy match (be honest: how often have you truly felt confident of a Boro victory?), we still seem to have not learnt a thing. Or maybe we're just not capable of what our results sometimes lead us to believe in...

Read more...

Back In Time: Middlesbrough 8, Manchester City 1, 2007/08

In a week of nostalgia, Si's Insights looks back at a game that pulled the wool over everyone's eyes...

With our season over, the last week or so has been one of "looking back" on Planet Boro. We've already reminisced about our promotion-clinching 4-1 win over Oxford United on May 3, 1998 (which will feature in next week's "Back In Time" column) and, of course, Eindhoven, which had a build up to remember but an aftermath to forget. Instead of being the new beginning we hoped it would be, it was the beginning of the end, with a crippling debt and gradual mismanagement of a solid spine eventually leading to a relegation we've still to recover from.

Today (May 11) sees the anniversary of both the worst and best of Boro - Juninho's tears at Elland Road (1997) and one of the most incredible but ultimately irrelevant results in the history of the club (2008). Yes, it's four years to the day since we battered Sven's men.

What a day it was. Regardless of how divided Manchester City were, how little both sides had to play for, and how different the scoreline might have been had Richard Dunne stayed on the pitch, you couldn't help but react to the scoreline with amazement. Boro hadn't scored more than two goals in a match all season prior to this game. They'd won just twice in thirteen league and cup games prior to the previous match, a 2-0 home win against a Portsmouth team who had one eye on the FA Cup final. And no Boro player had scored more than once in a game until Afonso Alves suddenly and inexplicably netted a double in April... against the future double winners.

On the surface, this really was perversity of the highest order. Stewart Downing netted twice in a match for the only time in a Boro shirt (and his second was a beaut). Fabio Rochemback literally saved the best for last with a hard working, clever performance featuring a free kick that still has to be seen to be believed. Afonso Alves scored his one and only Boro hat-trick.

And, even more importantly...

Our biggest Premier League win, the then biggest win for anyone in the Premier League this century (until Spurs bettered it with a 9-1 trouncing of Wigan), and the first Boro player to score a hat-trick in four years.

How could any self-respecting Boro fan not be filled with self-belief after a game like that?

Alas, the trouncing of Manchester City was a mirage, not an oasis.

The summer of 2008 saw Rochemback, George Boateng, Lee Cattermole, Mark Schwarzer and Luke Young all depart, without really being replaced. New signings Justin Hoyte and Didier Digard were exposed as lightweight the following season, as was Alves, despite free kicks like this one. Tuncay picked and chose his games, Downing had an off season. Just about everything that could go wrong for us in 2008/09 did.

And you may not have seen it at the time, but the 8-1 win over City and its aftermath actually foreshadowed 2008/09 pretty well. Just how well would Boro have coped that day against eleven well-organised men who actually had something to play for? If you look at the goals again, you'll notice that Alves had a ridiculous amount of space for all three of his goals. The same is true for Downing's second goal, well executed though it was, and Aliadiere's goal. And, lest we forget, Adam Johnson's goal needed a deflection to find its way into the net.

The truth is, despite the sporadic promise we had shown in Southgate's first two seasons, we had really only just escaped the dreaded drop... on both occasions.

Should we really have been that surprised that trying to enforce Southgate's Arsenal-lite style of play with an even weaker squad would lead to relegation?

And, while both Manchester City and Boro have faced their fair share of trials and tribulations since that day,  nowadays, we're really little more than an average Championship side, while City are set to be crowned champions of England.

Afonso Alves, who we thought was the answer to our goalscoring problems, eventually left for Qatar, while Adam Johnson, who at one point couldn't even get into our first team, is on the verge of picking up a Premier League winners' medal.

Who would have seen that happening four years ago? Read more...

Back In Time: Manchester United 3, Middlesbrough 3, 1996/97

Si's Insights looks back at a classic game which, unfortunately, had consequences...

Even before this season began, the pluses and minuses of Tony Mowbray's Boro were all too clear to see. Our current squad has some really good individual players, and is capable of playing some sparkling football, but can also let their heads go down too often when the going gets tough.

Lest we forget that in 2010/11, we let a commanding 3-1 lead at home to Swansea turn into a 4-3 defeat, and got hammered home and away by then future champions QPR.

So are you surprised about the way the current season's going? Really?

In truth, this is nothing new with Boro, as my "classic game" of the week illustrated almost fifteen years ago.

Forget the 1-0 win over Chelsea in March 1997, magnificent though it was - this was the game that epitomized 1996/97 in a nutshell. It had it all - goals, attacking wizardry, spirit, good defending, bad defending, crazy weather... and even a little bit of controversy.

One thing about "big" teams, and Manchester United are no different, of course, is that they often want to referee games themselves as well as play. But a lack of fussiness from the officials, coupled with a distinct lack of pressure and that little bit extra emotional investment on the day, saw us play above ourselves in a manner no sane Boro fan would have dreamed of.

This was one of the rare occasions where the Foreign Legion played like a team and inspired those around them. Emerson's strike, the last decent thing he did that season, was very well taken, but it's the first and third Boro goals that leave the longest lasting impression. Look again at how Ravanelli (typical of our luck for most of that season, we lost him to a season-ending injury in this game) and Juninho link effortlessly with the rest of the team before Juni scores what would be one of the Goals Of The Season. And look at the way the third goal is created and scored - Stamp, Freestone and Mustoe combining brilliantly before Craig Hignett scores one of his most memorable goals in a Boro shirt. Not a foreigner in sight!

Yet our Foreign Legion's influence on the game was undeniable that day. Even if they were aided by what the not-yet-Sir Alex Ferguson said was the worst defensive display he'd seen from his team in years, it was their goals, and their movement - especially Juninho's - that inspired the rest of the team beyond belief. Our defence, too, with Big Nige at his most determined, was excellent - but sadly not quite capable of holding out for the win that would have ensured our survival, three points or no three points. To this day, I can't help wondering... what if we hadn't allowed Gary Neville to fire United back into it before the break? We would have then been spared the agony of having the game rest on the admittedly contentious decision not to allow a penalty after a "foul" by Phil Stamp.

Ultimately, though, the game illustrated what we had missed throughout the month of April 1997 - Juninho doing what he does best. Helping us to win. It was clear that repeated, unwelcome attention from man-marking, coupled with fatigue, had drained both him and us of confidence that month. By May, he was back at his best and terrorizing defences, albeit too late for us.

Luckily for him - and us - his real reward in a Boro shirt was to come, seven years later.

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Back In Time: Middlesbrough 4, Coventry 0, 1996/97

September sunshine. A packed Riverside stadium. Attacking wizardry on the pitch. Surely it seemed too good to believe? It was...

 

Ah, 1996. It's funny how we can be so selective with the benefit of hindsight. The way Boro fans look back on that year, you'd think it was a year to treasure, one that we would never see again. And in a way, they're right.

The then state-of-the-art Riverside Stadium was full every week, we were playing football we'd never dreamed we'd play, we were signing players that we thought would never come anywhere near Middlesbrough, the club was churning out quality publications like Riverside Red and Riverside Roar, and timeless music - that is to say, the best of Britpop, be it Oasis, Blur or Ocean Colour Scene - was blazing in our headphones and speakers.

Yet the fact is, we only won six league games that year. Was the division between our star players and more workmanlike pros too great to bridge? Were we too reliant on Nigel Pearson at the back? Was it Bryan Robson's largely wrong-headed tactics? Or was there something in the club's Christmas dinner of 1995? Take your pick.

Still, it's undeniable how memorable most of those wins were. And I'll start the "Back In Time" series by taking you back to one of those rare occasions where we lived up to expectations...

Coming off a 4-1 trouncing of West Ham in midweek, we were favourites to turn over Coventry, who had begun the season with just one point in four games. And turn them over we did, in a 4-0 victory that saw all three of our "foreign legion" excel. With no hint of the settling in problems that were to come, Emerson, described back then by The Independent's Scott Barnes as "arguably the most complete player in his position in the country", bossed midfield, while Juninho and Ravanelli got the goals. Of special note are the second and third goals - the kind that we probably took for granted in those days.

When I watch the game today, I notice how the foreign stars inspired our so called "ordinary" players to play above themselves. Watch again how perennial unsung hero Robbie Mustoe links up with Juninho for the second goal, and sets up Ravanelli for the third with a deceptively simple pass. And it does look like his long diagonal pass sets the ball rolling for the fourth goal too. This game was really as much about the unsung heroes as it was the Brazilian - and Italian - magic. On the surface, this was Boro at their best.

What the highlights aren't entirely telling you is that this game was also indicative of Boro at their worst. Remember the awful Phil Whelan (part of our defence that day)? No? Well, I'm not surprised... he was more than an inadequate replacement for "Big Nige", he just wasn't up to the demands of Premiership football, full stop. And he was part of a three man defence that three times let Coventry in for clear headers. Better finishers would have punished us.

Sure enough, there were other times during the match when we were almost punished - it took an excellent save from the much-maligned Allan Miller to deny John Salako at 2-0 up. Miller also turned a shot onto the post. And what if - what if - at 1-0 up, future Boro man Noel Whelan's "equaliser" had stood? Ravanelli might have been looked even more miserable than he did after his second goal.

Yes, I said it - miserable. Watch Ravanelli celebrate the second goal again, and you'll see he looks almost apathetic. He's just scored his sixth goal of the season, we're 3-0 up, and... this? It's as if he already senses things aren't well and is now playing the "I'm Now A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here" card that so many of our players have played over the years (see: Mark Viduka, Robert Huth). It's enough to vindicate The Sunday Times' David Walsh's point that these foreign stars really only came to Boro to make a buck. Is it any wonder Juninho was believed when he said he wanted to stay, while Ravanelli wasn't?

I don't mean to demean what was undoubtedly a memorable performance, one of breathtaking quality for the most part (at least up front). And it did put us joint top of the Premiership goalscorers chart for a week.

But we made a mistake on building dreams on a display like this, hoping that the virtuosity of our attack would be enough to compensate for a second-tier defence and wrong-headed tactics. Arsenal and Southampton would soon expose our central flaws... as would a relegation at the end of the season. Read more...