Where Do Boro Stand Now?

We return to examine Boro's 2013-14, looking back on what the team has achieved and looking forward to what they can, and should, aspire to achieve

To sum up Boro's intermittently promising, mostly maddening but in the end underwhelming 2013-14, one should look no further than the 1-0 win at eventually promoted Burnley in hindsight.

The result appeared to re-ignite very faint play-off hopes, which, typically for Boro, were swiftly extinguished in the next two games. The pattern of the match, a heroic backs-to-the-wall display enlivened by some genuinely pleasing-to-the-eye attacking play, was more of a telling illustration of why Boro are where they are these days.

For back in August 2009, in the earliest days of Boro's return to second tier football, Boro would have marched to a Championship ground with an aura of confidence, a sense of entitlement, and the elements of class required to both get results and strike fear into opposition sides. Hence a convincing 3-0 victory at Swansea that would seem hugely inconceivable today.

At Burnley, we were the underdogs, the no-hopers, the team expected to lose but capable of winning on a good day. Fondly recall, if you will, our victories at Old Trafford under McClaren, or England's win over Argentina in the 2002 World Cup.

Once upon a time, Boro were the England of the Premiership. Now, we seem more like the England of the Championship. A good team that can do better than most at their level, but is rarely likely to be a top dog.

We start the season by cranking up expectation levels, and we savage the players and managers who don't meet them. Like the English press, we have a worrying tendency to build Boro up and knock them down.

If Aitor Karanka received frightening criticism during the deepest, darkest recesses of the Boro Nil period, it was because he was a victim of his own success. He had artificially raised expectations to the point where Boro, as usual, could not live with them. Mere mentions of the play-offs under his reign turned a team who, for all the talk of a backbone, seemed to shiver and retreat from their goals when it mattered most of all.

The end result was a midtable finish that rather depressingly feels like the norm as far as present day Boro are concerned. Naturally, we will try convincing ourselves that if only Jacob Butterfield's ghost goal had stood, the hand of Henderson had been spotted and even a thimbleful of additional goals had been scored during the Noughty, Noughty Boro Nil period we'd be above Brighton, but we'd really be fooling no one but ourselves. The words “Championship” and “success” are no longer synonymous with Boro, if they ever were, and we have to deal with it.

I think it is time for everyone associated with Boro to take a long, hard look at themselves and decide not only what counts as success to Boro in this day and age, but if such success can be attained with the resources in hand.

Aitor Karanka's modus operandi, to me, translates as part Javier Clemente, part-present day Spain; a blend of faith, hard work, loyalty, systems and teamwork. All things that can get clubs moving in the right direction, leading them to a point where they can really achieve things. But a degree of vision and individualism is required to take teams that step further.

We still find ourselves asking, is AK truly visionary enough to take this team into the top flight and keep them there? More importantly, are the players? Ambition and vision are not the same thing. You can have all the will and drive to achieve in the world, but it counts for nothing without the wherewithal to achieve it.

Despite hugely promising signs in the last eight games, with the exception of the Millwall and Reading defeats, of course, there remains a doubt that Boro's “dreamers” have not been entirely won over by AK. The troublemakers have been punished, the players who don't fit into the coach's plans have been dropped and later reinstated, and Boro's best individual players have only shone sporadically, giving the unjust impression that the squad are victims of a system and regime that is not allowing them to play to their strengths. It is a theory that runs anathema to the football “dream” of a team being built around the skills of its best players and not the “vanity” of its coaches.

If AK is guilty of imposing this theory on the players, and I don't believe he is, frankly, it isn't his fault so much as a present day football climate where money has become far too important. The need for effective systems that “work” and “get the job done” are likely to overtake the desire for individual expression in the eyes of chairmen everywhere. As Tony Mowbray would say, it is what it is.

But that cuts no dice with fans. The need to *feel* successful, to *believe* that one is making progress, regularly overtakes actual progress. Discipline, organisation, solidity and professionalism are forgotten amidst the desire for the tricky wingers that will get us jumping off our feet, the match-winning Roy Of The Rovers thunderbolts that will have us dreaming anything is possible, and a star forward that regularly scores goals of all kinds. In short, fans prioritise entertainment over attainment. Of course, there's nothing really wrong with that. Entertainment sells. It fills our hearts with excitement. What is wrong, and I've noted this before, is the thought that we can have it both ways when we haven't even fully had it one way first.

AK has been criticised for overrelying on “higher quality” loanees like Shay Given, Kenneth Omeruo and Nate Chalobah at the expense of developing young players like Ben Gibson, Richie Smallwood and Jason Steele. What the detractors fail to take into account is just how valuable the loanees were to Boro: they not only defined the positions of strength that Boro needed to fill, but they inspired everyone around them. They set high standards for the rest of the squad to aspire to.

A legacy of the Steve McClaren era was that Dave Parnaby's graduates were then driven by a feeling of entitlement that does not come naturally to our current youngsters. Smallwood, Steele, Adam Reach, Luke Williams and especially Ben Gibson may be among the most gifted academy graduates we have produced, yet the feeling persists that they will never reach the heights attained by the likes of David Wheater, Adam Johnson, James Morrison, Tony McMahon, Andrew Taylor, Lee Cattermole or even Matthew Bates. Those lads were blooded, nurtured and trained in an atmosphere in which Boro believed they belonged in the top division. They all played in Europe. While Reach made his name against Doncaster and Burnley, Cattermole starred at Rome's Olympic Stadium.

Consider, now, how the top level experience of Given, Omeruo and Chalobah will have surely rubbed off on today's generation. That can only be a good thing.

What we are really missing are players who can genuinely make a difference on a consistent basis. The reality has dawned upon us that Emmanuel Ledesma, Muzzy Carayol and Albert Adomah, exciting though they can be, are not the kind of players you can count upon to dictate a game or win a match regularly. Frankly, they wouldn't be playing for Boro otherwise!

And we still lack true *leadership*. It's been said that the likes of Brian Clough and Jack Charlton succeeded in management by getting a few “stars in the making” alongside underachievers and convincing them they were world beaters; and the whole ended up far greater than the sum of their parts. If you could call Omeruo and Chalobah “stars in the making”, then you could say AK has already succeeded to a point.

But has AK found a genuine leader who believes in his vision? I'm not so sure. If Grant Leadbitter has sort of stood out as a leader in midfield, I don't believe either Jonathan Woodgate or Rhys Williams is the answer in defence. This is a matter that urgently needs addressing.

Regardless of the playing personnel on board next season, the potential for Boro is there, as it always has been pre-season. AK's post-match interviews remain indecipherable, but most on-pitch roles have been defined, belief has been restored and a strong coaching set up is in place.

It is now down to the club, the fans, the players and management team to ensure that the strong end to the season will not be another false dawn.

For now, let's enjoy the World Cup.

Up The Boro!

(Originally published online at Middlesbrough's Evening Gazette on May 26, 2014.) Read more...

Boro'd Time On A Borrowed Spine

Photo: Evening Gazette

Following Boro's triumph over Steve McClaren's Derby, in which Boro beefed up and cheesed off a Big Mac, in a pickle plain ketchup with QPR, and prior to the ninety minutes of thrilling rollercoaster madness against Birmingham, I asked myself what seemed, at the time, a welcome question.

Jonathan Woodgate and Daniel Ayala had proven themselves to be key components in the Boro defensive collective that Aitor Karanka had built. The question was, now, with Joszef Varga, Kenneth Omeruo, Ben Gibson and George Friend - Joe, Ken, Ben and George - so well established, where would they fit in?

Unfortunately, we're about to find out sooner than expected.

As thrilling as Tuesday night's display was, George's groin and the late red cards for Ken and Ben are heavy prices to pay. It's no longer a question of where players will fit in as whether or not we'll have enough players for a strong defence against promotion chasing Burnley at Turf Moor.

For a moment, I had toyed with the idea of a 3-5-2 with Nate Chalobah, Woody and Ayala at the back, and Dean Whitehead and Grant Leadbitter shielding them with the revitalized Jacob Butterfield behind Lee Tomlin and Danny Graham. It may appear to be a good temporary measure. Except I do not see either Varga or Albert Adomah being comfortable in wing back roles, and that much tinkering with the system might be unsettling.

It may be better to bring in Seb Hines, or even an untried prospect, to fill in the "gap" at left-back, with both Friend and Gibson unavailable; and, from that point on, field a similar side to that which beat Brum.

That's the tactical side of things sorted. But there are more pressing issues to be raised.

I feel very calm going into the Burnley game. Some are mentioning play-offs again, and admittedly it's not mathematically impossible. But theoretically, as Bernie Slaven said, the season has been "over for weeks now". Bernie is also right when he illustrates how the goals are more likely to flow for a team that is under no pressure.

Hence a reason, if not *the* reason, for the recent Boro wins and goals... and, more likely, the same reason why we were able to humiliate then automatic promotion chasing Cardiff at their place, on live TV, with a then second choice midfield of Kevin Thomson and Richie Smallwood back in 2011. Regardless of the players available, any team in the right form and right frame of mind will relish playing a game. No disrespect to the famous class of 1996, but would have been so keen not to play at Blackburn if we hadn't been hammered at Anfield and gone twelve games without a win?

Also, our new found success, if you can call it that, has been built on a short-term, or borrowed, spine of Dimi, Omeruo, Chalobah and Graham. Cynics may argue that we're turning into a feeder club for Chelsea, or worse still, that these players' true qualities are only fully showing when they know they're likely to raise their market value.

The more rational, however, will deduce that even if the Chelsea loanees don't stay for longer - which is likely, given (pun intended) that they would demand wages of a certain Boro goalkeeping hero's proportions - AK has utilised them effectively. The roles in the system are clear. Boro now know how the team should be built if they are to prosper. That if we can't afford players like Shay Given, Omeruo or Chalobah, we definitely need players *like* them.

With the logics of our spine defined, every game towards the end of the season should now, really, be less about virtually impossible play-off dreams and more about building momentum for 2014-15. Or, even, giving potential new heroes their chance to shine. Perhaps the injuries and suspensions will open the door for the recently benched Boro youngsters to excite us like Smallwood and Adam Reach did at the end of Tony Mowbray's first season.

Whatever happens, here's to the good form continuing: and a strong end to the season.

(Originally published online at the Evening Gazette on April 11, 2014). Read more...

Steve McClaren: An Appreciation

He was castigated for his errors, overly pragmatic football and apparent disloyalty to the Boro cause, but was there a better team builder in the Riverside years?

When looking back at his time as Boro manager, it seems that Steve McClaren will, ultimately, be defined by one thing. Following an opening season and pre-season in which he had, it seemed, managed to revitalise a once aging, bloated squad and attempted to add some flair, much promise lay ahead.  With Steve Gibson’s backing, more than £20 million of it on players alone, he had constructed a relatively youthful, competitive side with a dash of invention. Fan favourite Juninho Paulista had returned, George Boateng would add creativity and steel, Ugo Ehiogu and then club captain Gareth Southgate were in the form of their careers, and on-loan Cameroon star Geremi would provide the service for next big thing Massimo Maccarone. Who knew what Boro could achieve?

Then came Leeds United. The moment that it blew up in the paper that McClaren had emerged as a favourite to take over at Elland Road, his connection with the fans was permanently damaged, if not severed in some quarters. It is said that the only reason he didn’t move is because Gibson blocked the move; logic suggests, with his agent Colin Gordon perpetually on the phone trying to shift his client to Leeds, that McClaren was quite happy to go there and take Southgate with him, as a replacement for the departing Rio Ferdinand. And the national media milked it. Heavily. McClaren had, like the national press before, during and after his time at Boro, patronized his employers. No club should be patronized.

Even if, it had to be admitted, that for all Steve Gibson’s money, Boro were an unfashionable club in an unfashionable area. Still, we were entitled to dream, and McClaren had dared to openly stamp on those dreams. To burst the proverbial bubble. It was a “stepping stone” mentality on his behalf that resurfaced with Newcastle in 2004 and the England circus in 2006, and has never really been forgotten, or possibly forgiven.

What’s often also forgotten, however, is that McClaren could be as stubborn as his chairman regarding Boro-related matters. When rumours of Gareth Southgate, Franck Queudrue or Chris Riggott, key elements in his system, moving on to bigger clubs surfaced, he refused to let those players go. Yet one Steve is praised to the skies while the other is regarded more as a Judas. It’s easy to see why. Gibson is the epitome of loyalty, the story book hero, the local lad made good who loves the club, the guy who pumped his money into Boro to turn them into a force. That’s the fairytale. But the reality is, to complete one’s fairytale ambitions, you need a darker side, a bit of ruthlessness. That’s exactly what McClaren showed, and he should be commended for that.

McClaren was also caught between a rock and a hard place. He had to deal with the expectations of Boro fans who were quite rightly starved of success – we’d never won a major trophy, after all – but he also saw the sense in rebuilding the team for the future. His “five-year-plan”, despite a very dodgy start, showed strong signs of blossoming in his first season, with two good spells sandwiched in between three runs of four straight defeats. He was smart enough to realise that the “dream” attacking triumvirate of Carlos Marinelli, Alen Boksic and Szilard Nemeth wasn’t up to much – one great showing against Derby does not a winning offensive formula make – so in came Benito Carbone, some excitement in the league, a great cup run based on solidity and a good base on which to build on the following season. It was only after a hugely frustrating 2002-03, where we played some genuinely amazing football at home and yet finished mid-table without a decent cup run to enjoy, that greater short-termism became McClaren’s credo.

Yet that wasn’t entirely to Boro’s detriment. Despite - or maybe because of? - McClaren’s pragmatism, quality reeked through his teams from 2003 onwards: the midfield magic of Geremi, Juninho, Gaizka Mendieta, Bolo Zenden and (sporadically) Fabio Rochemback, the goals of Yakubu, Mark Viduka and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, the exciting breakthroughs of Stuart Parnaby, Stewart Downing, James Morrison and Lee Cattermole, and the continued cult heroism of “French Franck”, arguably McClaren’s best buy after Southgate. It’s quite telling that one of the first things McClaren installed at the club was leadership, epitomized by the Southgate signing, and then set out to build the team from there. The less “glamorous” players, such as Joseph Job, Doriva, Danny Mills, Szilard Nemeth, Maccarone (of course!), Noel Whelan and even Ricketts also had their moments: without Ricketts’ equaliser against Spurs we may not even have had a Carling Cup semi-final to play in 2004.

Every single one of McClaren’s five seasons had something to look forward to or talk about: one League Cup quarter-final; two FA Cup semi-finals, one more painful and painfully significant than the other; a surprisingly successful debut season in Europe featuring just one home defeat; a good result or two against Manchester United every season (but for Alan Smith’s late equaliser in 2004, McClaren would have won more games against United than he lost); and, of course, Cardiff and Eindhoven. There was also the drama inherent in possibly the most Jekyll And Hyde season of the Riverside era, where the team bounced back from embarrassing thrashings and a season ticket revolt to demolish champions elect Chelsea, just in time for the thrilling road to our first ever European final. Remarkable!

One must admit that when we put the Leeds, Newcastle and England fiascos aside, along with a handful of other bad things too numerous to discuss (like paying £3.5 million for Michael Ricketts, crucial goal or not), McClaren’s success is, to a point, admirable. It might not be wrong to argue that the Boro teams he built could, and probably should, have achieved more, but one should also consider the lack of depth and advanced age of his later squads, partly brought about by the “rock and a hard place” mentality mentioned earlier. And he did try to wrestle away the defeatism in the Boro psyche, even if he didn’t quite succeed.

It was just unfortunate for Boro that McClaren’s final season ended with the club right back where they started, his and arguably Boro’s short-termism leaving behind an aging, bloated squad with no European football. Upset though we were that he came out smelling like roses at the time, seemingly abandoning a metaphorical sinking ship for a job of higher prestige once he saw what lay ahead (the Road To Eindhoven cost us £12 million alone), you have to put all emotionalism aside and ask: would we have acted much, if any, differently in his shoes?

And on reflection, it is more likely that any pain at the end of his reign didn’t really result from his departure, or even the manner of it. For rather than lead us onto a brand new highway towards a glorious future, the Gibson-McClaren years had taken us a long way to discover how far we still were from the Boro Dream. But was that really Typical McClaren... or more like Typical Boro?

(Originally published online at the Evening Gazette on April 4, 2014.) Read more...

A Bottle Top, Then Spirits Drop... But There's No Need To Throw A Strop

After months of what seemed like tentative, slow but worthwhile steps in the right direction, New Boro, or Boro Nil, suddenly looked to have regressed to form in the most Typical of ways.

We’d wanted goals. We got goals. But not in the manner we had hoped for.

To be frank, with the exception of George Friend’s goal, little looked to have changed on Saturday. We were as competitive, hard-working and solid as we have so far expected any side under Aitor Karanka to be. We had a goal to show for it too, and could have had more. Surely now, all we had to do was close out the game in typical Karanka fashion...

Hold on there. Let’s pause and rewind a little. “Could have had more”.

I am sure that managers often sit down and recount missed chances after a game they haven’t won, and hope they don’t live to regret them. This should have been one of those occasions for AK.

For this was the day that our luck at the back finally ran out.

On the stroke of half-time, our six-man-collective worked very well to nullify Ravel Morrison, Niko Krancjar and Joey Barton. When the impressive Jozsef Varga’s tackle, which you can’t blame him for attempting, was evaded, we had little choice to set an offside trap in the event of Dimi Konstantopoulous parrying an incoming shot. The decision on Yossi Benayoun’s goal really could have gone either way – unluckily for us, it went QPR’s way.

And with the equaliser notched, it was left for Harry Redknapp to give his side a half-time rollicking, tinker his formation to blunt the attacking freedom of our wide men, and settle for a result of any kind. At least until the presence of a certain bottle top handed three points to him, just seconds after Friend came inches away from netting his second and a possible winner for Boro. A clearly demoralised Boro backline made Morrison’s goal easy.

It would be terribly simple to conclude that apart from those three moments, Boro didn’t do anything wrong, per se. But to dwell on this would be to ignore the difficult question of why we didn’t hurt QPR enough when we had the opportunity. It’s one of the oldest clichés in football – you’ve got to take your chances. Making Dimi an unfair scapegoat or bleating “what can we do about hard luck and referees?” simply won’t wash. We ought to remember that our goal was fortunate too.

The most critical among us will probably point fingers, as usual, at AK’s 4-2-3-1 formation, which he unsurprisingly kept in place for Huddersfield.

Perhaps, it can be argued, AK *is* over-thinking things. Perhaps he is trying to train his team to play top tier football in the second tier, to swim with the best before they even know how to paddle with them.

Wouldn’t it make more sense, some believe, to sacrifice one of the two human shields of the back four and offer Danny Graham more support? Wouldn’t it be better to revert to good old 4-4-2 with our wide men bombarding down the flanks, and another attack-minded player, like Kei Kamara or even Lee Tomlin, to play alongside Graham?

But it is easier for us, as we speak with the benefit of a different point of view: fans with years of experience in this division, and knowledge of what seems to be required to get out of it nowadays. It’s also easy to forget, amidst our understandable frustration with the Karankanaut, that AK’s first full season in his first managerial appointment is not even over. He has never coached in the English game before. And he appears to be a man of integrity, a serious student of football who is trying to establish a successful pattern of play for Boro for both the short and long term.

A problem, perhaps, lies with the culture clash created by employing a non-English coach at an English club. It’s dawned on me that the managers who achieved most success at Boro (recently: McClaren), or at least truly felt like part of the club (recently , Robson, Southgate, Mowbray), were English. Recall that a similar culture clash occurred when world-class players like Emerson, Juninho and Fabrizio Ravanelli were planted in a team of mediocrities, and you get a hint of what AK also has to deal with.

And it makes you admire him even more when you realise that his formation was a serious success in the winter months! So – apart from the obvious possibility of us being “found out” – what has gone wrong?

I think that back then, the likes of Lukas Jutkiewicz and Kei Kamara were being employed as “supply forwards”, men who won the ball and frequently laid it back for the midfield to prosper. Danny Graham is not a “lay off” player – he is an out-and-out goalscorer, a fox in the box. If we are to continue playing him regularly, it is impossible not to conclude that the system must be tinkered with slightly to accommodate him.

Refreshingly, that is exactly what Karanka did against Huddersfield in the second half, replacing Nate Chalobah with Lee Tomlin and switching to a 4-1-4-1, with Tomlin in a supporting role behind Graham. The second half result – 1-0 in Boro’s favour with a very well taken goal by Albert Adomah, his second of the match – should not go unnoticed.

The final result – 2-2 – was not a statement of lack of ambition on Boro’s part, but more an indication that the season really is dead. A season that truly held promise not so long ago is fizzling out like a popped balloon, leaving fans glum about the future.

But the Karankanaut being deflated for now – deflated, not dead – is no cause for doom and gloom. The play offs were always a long shot anyway, and there are still eight games left. So let’s at least try and enjoy them.

And with “AA” back amongst the goals again, there might just be plenty to enjoy.

Up The Boro!

(Originally published online at the Evening Gazette, March 27, 2014.)
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The Curse Of Ordinariness

With Boro's play-off hopes almost certainly out the window, we reflect on the mentality currently affecting the club and fans, examining its origins

"Gazza cried, football died."

This popular four-word poem is both slightly misguided and extremely simplistic, but it swiftly illustrates the malaise that has afflicted modern football since the early 1990s.

Paul Gascoigne for England, Jack Charlton for Ireland, Bryan Robson for Boro. Three men who took English football, Irish football, and Middlesbrough FC out of their working class origins and into middle-class, even high-class interest. Seemingly from nowhere, everyone became football experts. Things became more about the journey and the stars than football itself.

One unfortunate legacy of the World Cup in the USA in 1994 and Boro's 1996-97, however exciting they were at the time, is their value as spectacle. Regardless of the problems behind the scenes, and there were plenty in both cases, it felt more about the glitz than the game. No one involved with international football and Boro, respectively, had seen anything like them before, leaving said experiences impossible to replicate in the future.

Worse still, they left the impression that any club or national football team could be "big" if they had the cash, the stars and the glitz to paper over their cracks. Pretensions of grandeur have always existed in football, but I strongly believe that prior to USA '94 and Boro’s Year That Had It All (it did), they had never been so apparent.

Everybody, especially my dreamy teenage self, wanted to hop on the bandwagon: the futuristic, space-age stadiums, the enormous crowds, the fashionable, American-style kits. It all seemed so mouthwatering. But the early 1990s were cursed that way: short-term solutions to maximize the profitable potential of the times with little thought to how it would affect the future. They weren't the greatest heights of football; but we were naïve and fresh-faced enough to *elieve they were. The internet and corporatization of the modern game hadn’t taken over to the extent they now have.

The children and teenagers who grew up on board Robson's "Revolution" believed that it was normal for Boro to compete for the best players and amongst the biggest names. Almost as if we were entitled to it.

And any seasons that don't match up to the thrills 1996-97, and indeed the other best seasons of the last two decades, presented - however painful the eventual outcomes might sometimes be - are usually met with at least a little bit of disappointment.

What does this have to do with Aitor Karanka and today's Boro? I'll tell you.

In the very wise words of Anthony Vickers, today’s Boro have been struck down by "the curse of ordinariness. After twenty incredible years with at least one spell of drama every season - promotion or relegation battles, cup runs and superstar signings - (Boro) have settled into flabby humdrum mid-table ennui... (slipping) from crazy rock and roll high jinks to cocoa and Radio Four and early nights."

While I would argue that not all of those years were "incredible", of course, I currently feel, albeit reluctantly, in agreement with virtually every word.

And last Saturday, we found ourselves "Bourne" Of Frustration on the South Coast, once again hit by the almost certain probability that, Muzzy Carayol or no Muzzy Carayol, this current Boro squad is just not good enough to truly challenge the top teams in this division.

This team, in my view, simply isn't built for consistency. AK has been given the tough task of making the inconsistent consistent. One should give him more than enough credit for at least managing to do half the job.

Even then, the legacy of our past hangs over us like a dark cloud. Do we expect too much of our players? As I've pointed out before, we have artificially raised the standards of the current Boro squad because we've seen our "magic men" – Emmanuel Ledesma, Muzzy Carayol, Albert Adomah, even the departed Marvin Emnes – do magical things. Either that, or we miss the power, speed and excitement that comes with the English game when it works.

And people don't simply want results. They want to feel excited, to be inspired, to be dazzled, and to enjoy a spontaneous spectacle. These are what put bums on seats, for obvious reasons: we pay big money to attend games, so we find ourselves almost unreasonably demanding the best from football on a regular basis. It is a curse of the modern game, where the quest for perfection is remembered more than any kind of consistency or results. We might almost certainly prefer it if AK surrendered some of his apparent principles of organisation and solidity for some more instantaneous excitement.

But for a club in Boro's situation, would the cost be worth it?

(Originally published online at the Evening Gazette on March 21, 2014. Photos courtesy of the Evening Gazette.) Read more...

Boro Must Make Their Play To Make Teams Pay

As a writer, I once made a rather embarrassing blunder.

I declared our new assistant boss, Craig Hignett – who we should all welcome with open arms, for the record – to be the “Scouse Scholes”. Mainly because he made goals, scored goals, and wasn’t renowned for his tackling skills.

But there was one crucial element missing from his game. Many saw him as a playmaker in the mould of Paul Scholes, yet, for all his match-winning passes and goals, Hignett just could not influence a team’s attacking movements in the same manner as a Scholes. In short, Higgy wasn’t really a playmaker. But he prospered with the right kind of playmaker alongside him: those who watched him play in the same team as Nick Barmby, Juninho, Paul Merson and even Emerson will testify to that.

In my view, the ideal central midfield – which can consist of two, maybe three, players – should contain three types of player. The anchorman, whose job it is to shield the back four, break up opposition attacks and win the ball for his team. The action man, who can drive box-to-box, regularly assist or score (sometimes spectacular) goals and/or is aggressive in the tackle. But, most importantly, the playmaker, who receives the ball on a regular basis and sets the tempo of a game, his short, incisive passes and probable goal-scoring and goal-making skills influencing and inspiring everyone around him.

It goes further in Italian football, where there are two kinds of playmakers: the trequartista (the attack-minded playmaker) and the regista (the defensively minded playmaker). Their importance to a team cannot be underestimated because no playmakers, or a lack of them, points to an equal lack of subtlety in team play and a demand to fill the team’s attack with exciting, inconsistent “action men” as a means of immediate problem-solving. I return to our famous 4-0 win over Doncaster and the wisdom of writer Jared Browne when underlining the flaws of this hit-and-miss approach – although entertaining, power, speed and exciting goals do not provide “a durable platform for success at the highest level.” Matches like the Donny game do more harm than good to Boro, for we keep depending on such a flawed method to come good consistently.

With this in mind: who fulfils the playmaking roles at Boro? Who can successfully control the flow of our play and stop us running into dead ends in attack?

Let’s start with central midfielders. Jacob Butterfield is a good player, capable of conjuring match-winning feats or long range howitzers out of thin air. But a playmaker? No. He lacks influence and can easily be nullified by effective defending: he is more of an inconsistent action man. Dean Whitehead is an anchorman and rather limited action man, someone who can stifle opposition attacks, but offers little creatively. Even Grant Leadbitter, effective box-to-box midfield general and attacking inspiration though he is, cannot really make Boro tick on his own. He is no playmaker.

Easy though it would be to castigate Aitor Karanka for sending Richie Smallwood away on loan, the decision to effectively replace Smallwood and Marvin Emnes with Nathaniel Chalobah and Lee Tomlin seem like the correct ones. I watched Chalobah against Leeds and was impressed with how he set the pattern for the team; he was a real influence, quietly dictating play in the centre of the park. Earlier matches have shown that he has incisive through-balls in his locker too. He is, in Italian terms, the regista, a deep lying playmaker who can inspire.

That’s all very well. But where’s the trequartista? Playing Muzzy Carayol and Albert Adomah doesn’t solve the problem of Boro’s attack on its own, even though it would be a step in the right direction. Emnes could have filled the role – and certainly did, from time to time – but he switched off during games so many times that our patience, and AK’s, wore thin. Perhaps, not coincidentally, Boro’s Wondrous Winter Wins featured Emmanuel Ledesma thriving in the role of the trequartista, but once he was found out, his form dipped, fans began thinking of him as a waste of space and Boro haven’t scored since.

Bernie Slaven is right. Karanka needs to take the shackles off; Carayol and Adomah ought to start again no matter what, Danny Graham should not be so isolated up front, and if Kei Kamara is to be played, he must be played as a centre forward. But our front men still need a player who can inspire them, who can set the tone for attacks.

And who better than Tomlin? It is said that he thrives behind the front man, and while he might not meet the requirements of your typical trequartista – he has more of an “action man” look about him, and we don’t know if he’s got it in him to play *any* kind of visionary pass – he also has a presence and bullishness that really can inspire, especially at Championship level. Players pick up on the attitude of players who feel like they “own” a position, and Tomlin is more than capable of making that hole behind the centre forward his very own.

It’s time for AK to cull his stubbornness, utilise our attacking resources, and bring the goals back.

(Originally published online at the Evening Gazette on March 7, 2014.) Read more...

There's Light At The End Of This Tunnel...

As Boro's goal drought goes on, we look around for positive points - and find plenty to talk about

The positives to draw from Saturday’s televised encounter with Leeds were endless.

Shay Given, on his last Boro appearance, didn’t have a serious save to make. Jonathan Woodgate was back to his brilliant best, heading away crosses fearlessly and nullifying the threat of Ross McCormack. The full backs were given license to roam, albeit sporadically. Kenneth Omeruo survived a shaky start to find his feet (and head) at the back. Grant Leadbitter, Nathaniel Chalobah and Jacob Butterfield were a solid, combative and energetic midfield trio. It amounted to a fourth clean sheet in six games for the justly lauded Aitor Karanka Collective.

But, as every Boro fan now knows all too well, said collective are not delivering the goods at the other end of the pitch. The team’s failure to find the net for the sixth match in succession – Boro have now gone more than *six hundred* minutes without a goal, a club record – is enough to try anyone’s patience, and to dampen any spirit remotely raised by the team’s obvious improvement. Especially Aitor Karanka’s.

AK will, of course, not want to be thought of as a complainer, but he understandably and clearly feels let down. By his players, by his game plan, and by discontented sections of the Boro crowd who continue to search for easy answers to the latest Boro Problem.

Alas, their discontent with the manager is not unfounded. Elements of conservatism, inflexibility and stubbornness have been all too visible. The benching of top scorer Albert Adomah and fall out with the gifted Muzzy Carayol, at a time when the team is crying out for clinical creativity, raises suspicions that AK is finding some mavericks too hot to handle.

And unless AK can settle his differences with Boro’s more talented players and allow a little more flexibility and ingenuity into his methods, fears of no serious rise up the table this season, or even more worryingly, the next, will remain.

Top six or no top six, it is vital for Boro to finish on a high, so that positive momentum can be carried forward to the next campaign, as in 2010-11.

But – and this is a big but – it is also the players’ responsibility to listen. To learn from and adapt to a system that could benefit them in unexpected ways. It is likely that Carayol took unkindly to possible news that he would have to work on his game. Perhaps he really thinks he’s the finished article: and if so, how problematic for a player who can turn a match in Boro’s favour in the spur of a moment but who disappears from matches for too long. A similar thing could be said about Marvin Emnes, to a greater extent, and Adomah, to a lesser extent.

By contrast, look at Curtis Main. As maddening as AK’s apparent decision to re-invent Main as Boro’s Dirk Kuyt – he’s even got the hair now! – may seem to fans, it now appears, in many ways, inspired. To these eyes, Main thrived on Saturday, earning admiration for graft and tenacity in a similar manner to John Aldridge for Ireland.

Much is made of the negative effects of “re-inventing” forwards like this – Aldridge failed to score in his first nineteen international games, and Andy Cole struggled badly in his first full season at Manchester United – but did Aldridge fall just one short of the legendary Frank Stapleton’s international tally, or didn’t he? And did Andy Cole eventually hit the form of his life at United, or didn’t he? These are exciting parallels, a reminder of how managerial methods can unexpectedly merge with player ability to create something surprising and undoubtedly beneficial.

Unfortunately, patience tends to be little of a virtue for the fan who wants promotion and exciting football as soon as possible. Having gotten used to top-flight football for so long, it is hard not to gaze wistfully at the play-off positions, and those who are basking, or set to bask, in the surroundings of the Premier League.

And so the easy answers remain. Adomah should have started. So should Lee Tomlin. AK should have resolved his differences with Carayol. And so on.

Yes, these points are valid, and carry tantalizing what if’s with them. But they only scrape the surface.

The reality is that the long run of no goals has taken its toll on our style of play, burdening our attacks with excessive labour, frustration, desperation and, worst of all, fear.

The Karankanaut seems at a crossroads, hamstrung by an expectant populace’s desire for the right results combined with a need for spontaneous spectacle.

But, as fellow writer Jared Browne rightly put it, “you cannot do the extraordinary (in football) without doing the ordinary – maintaining a shape, game plan, and holding on to the ball.”

And, by focusing on this pattern of thought, and continuing to successfully build on the positive foundations we have already laid, we are almost certainly likely to move a step closer to finally ending that wretched goal drought – and possibly, *possibly* achieving the clinical consistency we crave.

(Originally published in the Evening Gazette on Wednesday, February 27, 2014.) Read more...

A Touch Of Realism Might Help...

Irish sports journalist Eamon Dunphy has long established himself as one of my favourite pundits. I say this not because I always agree with him, but because his provocative and arguably sensationalist views both in newspapers and on television have stimulated and continue to stimulate endless thoughts and ideas that make their way into my own analysis. Particularly when it comes to Boro.

Why is this? Because Boro are no strangers to what I call the “Dunphy Dilemma”: a club, or nation, reaches unprecedented heights, yet certain supporters and pundits are nagged by a “could do better” complex. That for all their team has achieved, there remains a “what if” feeling that the talent available isn’t being fully utilized.

Maximum potential hasn’t been reached. Silly mistakes are letting us down. Cue frustration, even anger.

One needs only recall Dunphy’s analysis of Jack Charlton’s tenure with Ireland, or Bryan Robson, Steve McClaren and Gareth Southgate... strike that, any Boro manager’s years in the job since the Riverside Stadium opened. All situations where emotional extremity and pretensions of grandeur run the risk of overtaking rational realism in the eyes of both fans and pundits who only want the best for their team.

To an extent, there’s nothing wrong with that. Rationality and hindsight never really come into play on match day. Why would they? But when things go even the slightest bit wrong, the search is on for solutions and scapegoats, which invariably revolve around the players, the tactics and the manager. Lots of easy answers float around the Twitter-waves, seemingly the solutions to all our difficulties. Except, they really aren’t. Of course many of these “solutions” appear logical at the time, but who said football was logical?

Just because players can and have done something special, even on the biggest of stages, doesn’t mean they will consistently do it. It’s easy to think that if a player for a rival team, or a Boro player who is either played out of position or not very often at all, puts on a show in a handful of games, then we have the answer to everything. Play our “unjustly treated hero” more often or sign the rival club’s player. It’s not that simple.

It makes more sense to follow a lead from the once highly regarded but rather retrospectively maligned Jack Charlton: study the opposition in advance and prepare a unit to combat it. What’s apparent now, more than ever before, is that Aitor Karanka settled on a plan once he realised the resources available to him at Boro: to get this hodgepodge of players playing as an organised, professional team, to stop them leaking goals, and to move them up the table.

Considering the way 2013 panned out at Boro, our expectations were modest, and I don’t doubt now that both AK and ourselves seemed astonished by the three straight wins that concluded an almost entirely wretched year. I really don’t think he expected to reawaken our play-off ambitions as soon as he did. But he did, and he is now dealing with the consequences. Any team that flirts with the promise of greater things sets a higher standard for themselves.

With Boro, it goes beyond that: raised expectations multiplied by the painful realisation that we might not be as good as we think we are. Hence the anger and disappointment. But to channel the blame onto select players, or the manager, is too misleading, too easy. We are not wrong when we say the team could do better; what is wrong is to point the fingers at individuals and individual responsibility rather than the collective.

Unfortunately, we still find ourselves searching for pantomime villains and easy answers. For example, I have little doubt that The Sunday Times’ David Walsh knew that it was harsh to dub Middlesbrough “Leeds-United-On-Tees” and pin the blame for Southgate’s exit on Gibson, Lamb and the fans. But, driven by anger at the way his friend Gareth had been mistreated by a club he genuinely seemed to love, he was in no mood to be fair.

Likewise, with hindsight, we cannot really blame Ben Gibson for his rush of blood to the head in the heat of the moment. But, in the midst of anger at throwing away a game that is there for the taking, all objectivity flies out the window.

Are our reactions right? No. But they are understandable.

I’m not going to pretend that there’s an obvious solution to this mentality, let alone Boro’s extremely long goal drought – which, I can assure you, is bothering me as much as all of you. But I’m not going to panic.

Arguments that the team are now enveloped by cautionary fear, and aren’t being daring enough, are not unfounded. But then, when the team was scoring goals by the bucket load, we wondered when, or even if, they’d be able to shut up shop.

Sometimes, analysts fall into the same trap as fans. We want consistency and results along with the thrills, dares and excitement of goal fests.

We want it both ways; but you need to have it one way first.

And it’s not lack of ambition, nor defeatism; it’s realism.

Realism that might just relieve the pressure currently on the players’ shoulders.

(Originally published in the Evening Gazette on February 21, 2014. Photos were also used in the Gazette article.) Read more...

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.) Read more...

Mikkel Beck: An Appreciation

He will never be looked back on fondly by Boro fans, but the not-so-great Dane’s attacking prowess was surprisingly respectable

Once upon a time, in those apparently-but-not-really halcyon days of 1996, it was considered “hip” to support the Boro. Marie O’Riordan, then editor of ELLE, proclaimed Middlesbrough the “hippest football team around”.

Naturally, such hipness came at a price. Many of the Riverside regulars who have since appeared to jump ship and never return were likened to, in some quarters, Johnny-Come-Latelies, hoppers on the Boro bandwagon only when it became the “in” thing. Shouts of “Where were you at Ayresome?” from Chelsea fans at the old Wembley in 1997 may have been harsh, yet they were hardly unfounded.

Still, in the second half of 1996, Boro, poor results or not, were indeed in vogue. They had a futuristic looking stadium, a “top class management team” (but really only in name), and a glossy club magazine. In November, said glossy club magazine, Riverside Roar!, saw no better way to celebrate the times (read: get our depressed minds off dodgy results and star players going AWOL) than with a list of sixty “hip” things about the Boro. And at No. 33 (No. 1 was Supporting The Boro, if you didn’t know already) stood one of our, ahem, “fashionable” signings that year – Mikkel Beck.

Even in the shadow of Fabrizio Ravanelli, Emerson and of course Juninho, Beck was a marketing man’s dream. The gutted look on his face following a 2-1 defeat to Derby, in which he was very unlucky not to equalise, endeared him to the fans. He posed with a Jaguar at Dutton Forshaw and commented on how “perfect” a drive it was. His name lend itself very well indeed to tabloid headlines (“BOTTLE OF BECKS TOO MUCH FOR MAGPIES” was a favourite). And hey, as Roar! put it, “any guy with a rock star and a TV series named after him must be hip”.

Of course, being hip is one thing, being good is another. Beck’s TV series namesake didn’t get a second series; would our new Danish star be more fortunate? Was he any good, and could he be trusted to deliver the goods?

As it turned out, problems would plague him before, during and after his time at Boro.

Prior to Euro 96, the then twenty-three-year-old had been touted as the Next Big Thing in his homeland, the natural successor to the Laudrup brothers. Such exalted expectations were not healthy, especially for someone whose goalscoring record at his pre-Boro club, Fortuna Koln, was rather modest – 26 league goals in 79 appearances, a strike rate of just under one every three games.

A solitary assist, a fortunate richochet to Brian Laudrup after Portuguese goalkeeper Vitor Baia’s clearance seemed to hit him in the face, was the sum total of his significant contribution that summer. By that point, Boro were already too far into the deal to pull out, giving the impression that Bryan Robson had signed Beck, as my colleague Mike Baker put it, more for what he represented than for his talent, which in our eyes now amounted to a completely uninspiring presence.

One can imagine that Robson, or Robbo, conceived Beck, as the second “upgrade” to the popular Midget Gem Trifecta that had proved so winning and successful in the closing months of 1995. The attacking trio of Craig Hignett, Nick Barmby and Jan Aage Fjortoft looked a dream; experienced young players who could complement one another and were a joy to watch. Unfortunately, they simply weren’t prolific enough. A total of eighteen league goals between them, a mere six for the cult hero of the “flying plane” celebration, by the end of 1995-96 was very revealing. It appeared necessary to raise the status and class of our firepower; Juninho had been part one of Robbo’s new plan, and Beck, supposedly, would be part two. That would be that.

Then, in Typical Boro fashion, we found that Fortuna Koln were seeking compensation for Beck, delaying his Boro debut for months. In between, a certain Silver Fox was on his way from Juventus. The amateurish nature of the Boro system in those days, described by Italian newspaper Corierre Della Sport as the building of a house starting with a roof, should have been more apparent to our too dreamy eyes.

When Beck finally made his full league debut, in a 0-0 home draw with then high-flying Wimbledon (how times can change!), his strike partner looked down his nose at him (although in fairness, Fabrizio Ravanelli patronised everyone), unrest was stirring up behind the scenes, Nick Barmby was on his way out, and inspirational captain Nigel Pearson was on the verge of a long-term injury lay off. Beck’s place and identity in this mixed up, muddled up, shook up squad was as uncertain as Boro’s future now looked.

He’d been thrown into a cauldron, a victim of Robbo’s “solution” of throwing money at any problems that arose. He was cast as a replacement for Barmby, a partner for Ravanelli, and Robbo seemed not to have noticed that both Beck and Ravanelli were two very left-footed strikers. Right from the start, their imbalanced tandem was apparent when Beck headed against the post and the rebound landed on Ravanelli’s wrong foot. One more horrible miss, against Newcastle, and Beck had his first league goal; but it was a consolation, doing little to hide the fact that our black-and-white rivals were charging up the table while Emerson was about to go AWOL.

The culture clashes in the side had been mismanaged, with the idealistic ambition of the Juninhos & Ravanellis on one side and the sobering mediocrity of the Becks on the other. Boro were, in large part, a collection of “confidence players” in a “confidence team” who never really seemed sure if they were a “working class club” or a member of the elite they so desperately wished to join.

In spite of all this, Beck managed 11 goals in 38 games in his first season. While that looks bad – even worse, in fact, if you consider that Beck netted just 5 in 25 league matches in 1996-97 – one must also consider his situation.

For starters, the word “confidence” defined Beck more than any other “confidence player” in the team. When it went, he was truly woeful; you could sense the impact from seemingly endless encounters with the woodwork seeping into his game. He hit the frame of the goal in each of his opening three league games, and, perhaps not too surprisingly, didn’t score again in the league until March. A sprinkling of goals in the cup runs, including one against Newcastle, hinted at his gifts, but he could not inspire on his own; he needed the right sort of presence alongside him, and the bullish Ravanelli wasn’t it. Rumours that Beck was gay made him somewhat alien to the other players, with one squad member going as far as refusing to get changed in front of him.

To his credit, though, he remained a trier; the league match at home against Newcastle in February saw Beck at his most profligate, yet you could only feel for him when Darren Peacock popped up out of seemingly nowhere to hook his goal bound chip off the line. And when Robbo finally realised that either Beck or Ravanelli worked best up front, rather than the two of them together, Beck’s form, and Boro’s, briefly picked up, with three goals for the Dane during that magical three week spell in March 1997.

It wasn’t so much the quantity of his misses that would define him that season, but the quality. Many talked about how different our results might have been in the home league derbies had he not struck the post, had there been no Darren Peacock, and so on. The free header that went wide against Blackburn, and his failure to control Juninho’s pass on that fateful day at Elland Road will not be easily forgotten either, nor will his invisibility in the FA Cup final. With injuries forcing Juninho and Craig Hignett deeper, we cried out for influential attacking figures that day – and he let us down.

Yet it could be argued that in a way, Beck was less of a disaster than Ravanelli; if the White Feather scored plenty of goals, he was guilty of arrogance and not playing to the best of his ability. Frankly, Beck did not have as much ability to waste. And regardless of how uncomfortable certain teammates felt around the Dane, his moods weren’t so bothersome, he wasn’t upsetting the whole squad, and he wasn’t earning £42,000 a week.

Better still, he would go on to turn his perceived lack of influence into an asset. In a similar manner to which Andy Cole truly prospered at Manchester United once the Eric Cantona aura had flickered and died, Beck – briefly – prospered with the shadow of Ravanelli lifted, Juninho replacement Paul Merson fully settled, and a surprisingly committed Emerson in place. Yes, we dropped down a level, but 13 goals in 22 league matches between October and December 1997 spoke volumes – as did remarkably cool and determined finishing against the likes of Huddersfield, West Bromwich Albion and Stockport.

 

For that brief moment in time, he seemed rehabilitated. Then Emerson left for Tenerife, Beck missed a sitter at the Valley, the team went on to receive a 3-0 thrashing and he was simply never the same for the rest of the season. It was a sign of just how easily such things could get to him, a weak mentality both on and off the pitch that was only vitalised with the presence of either the playmaker in the hole behind him – step forward, Juninho or Merson – or the playmaking, prolific, but no less enigmatic goalscorer alongside him.

In a way, Beck and Hamilton Ricard were made for each other; enigmas who Robbo would never really consider the first name on the teamsheet if he had the choice, yet looked like forming a prolific understanding when they played together: in the Premier League, no less! Beck’s role in Ricard’s braces against Tottenham and Everton is concrete proof of that, and with Ricard alongside him, he would go on to net a double of his own against Sheffield Wednesday.

By that point, Robbo was about to intervene in Typical Robbo fashion. In the past, he’d signed Beck, then found he could sign Ravanelli, so he did. He’d later signed Ricard, then found he could sign Alun Armstrong and Marco Branca. And when Beck and Ricard had formed a partnership, he signed Route One specialist Brian Deane. If our results stayed solid, flair was drained from the side. It was sort of heart warming that Beck’s final major Boro contribution was kind of redemptive: the opening goal in the 3-0 win over Southampton which ended a run of nine games without a win in the league. It was too little, too late. Beck was on his way to Derby and Irishman Keith O’Neill stepped into his shoes.

If Mikkel Beck didn’t live up to expectations during his turbulent time at the Boro, he should at least be lauded for his contribution and endeavour, intermittent and circumstantial though they were. And at least he was no Andreas Andersson.

(Originally published in the Evening Gazette on January 24.) Read more...

The Big Boro Questions: January 2014

With Boro on the verge of returning to league action, and the transfer window wide open, we pose a few questions about the current set up and what must be done if Boro are to progress.

What should we look for from our goalkeeper?

Any team truly welcomes a goalkeeper who is not only a good shot stopper, but calm under pressure, dominant in the box and an inspirational presence. Shay Given has every single one of those qualities. We may not be able to afford to keep him, but Jason Steele should learn from Given while he can. While Steele's shot stopping prowess has never really been in doubt, every other aspect of his game – especially his fluctuating confidence – can still be improved, and now is as good a time to benefit from a much more experienced custodian if any.

Will Aitor Karanka's collective defensive strategy continue to work?

Our more collective backline, which Kenneth Omeruo should fit into without any trouble, has already proven to be a crucial building block for success – three straight wins, six goals and three clean sheets in a row at the end of 2013 – and a calming, sturdy presence behind our impressive wing men, Emmanuel Ledesma, Muzzy Carayol and of course Albert Adomah. But this increased solidity has come at the cost of additional penetration down the flanks.

While I wouldn't suggest an outright reversion to the attacking full backs strategy, which remains fraught with risk, I would encourage AK to remain open to it, as a back-up plan. Boro have had no shortage of "full backs" who like to get forward over the years, such as Neil Cox, Curtis Fleming, Dean Gordon, Vladimir Kinder, Christian Ziege, Geremi, Franck Queudrue, Luke Young, Andy Taylor, Justin Hoyte, Tony McMahon, Joe Bennett, and currently George Friend. Perhaps an additional exciting presence on the right flank would be very valuable as an emergency alternative to the "solidity" of a Frazer Richardson or Jozsef Varga?

Were we to sell Grant Leadbitter, would we be losing our best midfield player?

No, but we would be losing our most pivotal one. Richie Smallwood might have extra exuberance, Dean Whitehead more determination and Jacob Butterfield more creativity, but none can inspire, break up play and "set off a move" in the same manner as Leadbitter. He is Barry Robson meets Nicky Bailey – he can be devastating going forward, but when required to stay back and anchor midfield, he is disciplined enough to do so. He is also the closest thing we have to a leader in the centre of the park; it is now merely a matter of whether he fits AK's long-term plans.

Is Bernie Slaven right about our forwards' goals (or lack of them)?

I initially disagreed with Bernie Slaven when he complained that the strikers at the club weren't scoring enough goals.

Contemplation has led me to believe, however, that he has a point. I argued that with attacking players needing to complement one another more and more with time, the specialist goal scorer is becoming more redundant – and, if he is misfiring, he becomes a luxury (see: Afonso Alves). The clubs who achieve most prefer to sign forwards who are jacks-of-all-trades than masters-of-none. However, even those jacks-of-all-trades are not merely workaholics who hold the ball up and create chances for others; they score lots of goals too. Logic dictates that AK has realised Lukas Jutkiewicz is just not up to it as a consistent goal scorer, and has therefore deployed him in more of an Emile Heskey role than anything else.

But forwards who don't score consistently diminish a team's chances of killing off a game. So, Bernie, I stand corrected. It is indeed worrying that of our forwards, only Kei Kamara – and he’s been on the treatment table for a while – has proven to be remotely prolific. At least we can take comfort that Curtis Main has shown he will chase up chances that present themselves (see his goal against Bolton).

Is AK's intention to reduce the squad a worrying one?

With today's game more and more about excessive rotation, it initially feels like it. But as they say, it's not about the quantity, it's the quality. If the players continue to gel and perform, I'll be happy! Read more...

Kip In The Cup: Boro Snooze Off New Year Hangover

Boro's interest in the FA Cup ended as early as it has tended to in recent years, with the "concentrate on the league" mantra masking a wretched, spineless and slightly worrying display against the future City Of Culture's “Tigers". Naturally this writer, a citizen of the 2013 City Of Culture, was more than a little miffed.

Playing in an overly defensive formation, our players seemed too in awe of a Hull City side that frankly won at a canter.

Of course, it's not the end of the world. This is a much improved Hull City from the team we turned over 2-0 at the Riverside last season, and a cup exit does not, or at least should not, directly affect our ability to continue our recently improved league form.

Unfortunately, the emphasis ought to be on "should not" – the 2-0 defeat here carries on the loss of momentum after the first twenty minutes at Reebok Stadium to date.

More than that, it felt like the last week of 2013 had never happened, with disinterested players phoning in their work as if they thought the day was a holiday.

To state "with Boro's No-Longer-Rolls-More-Like-Reliant-Robin-Rhys reinstated the clean sheet record and winning run ended" might sound simplistic, and go against the "no scapegoats" theory I promoted heavily in my last column. But his mentality and lack of confidence appear to be spreading themselves to the rest of the team in the same manner that Nigel Pearson's absence in 1996-97 and Robert Huth's departure in 2009-10 severely damaged the all around strength of our back lines then. And in Karanka's Boro, where the success has been founded on collective solidity, this is a major problem.

Anyone's worst fears about Rhys Williams should have been confirmed yesterday – he is too moody, too cavalier and too in love with his own ability. He is the Nicklas Bendtner of Championship utility men – you sense that if he were half the player he thinks he is, he’d be twice the player he actually is.

But Rhys was only one problem on a day when tactics and team selection unexpectedly, and worryingly, backfired.

Rare starts were given to Dimitrios Konstantopoulos and Luke Williams in what was, perhaps understandably, a more cautious containment system from AK. The boss played a 4-2-3-1, featuring Grant Leadbitter and Dean Whitehead as holding midfielders in front of a back four with Reliant Robin Rhys in the centre. This gave Emmanuel Ledesma and Luke Williams freedom to roam either side of Marvin Emnes, behind Curtis Main.

The idea undoubtedly seemed that, as has been Boro’s wont recently, Main would hold the ball up and create chances for our attacking midfield trio, if he wasn’t lucky enough to receive goal-scoring service himself.

It didn't pay off. Leadbitter's deeper role curtailed his licence to attack. AK's policy of restricting the full-backs' runs reduced already limited penetrative width. And with Ledesma playing slightly more centrally in front of the engine room, his mistakes were less likely to be covered up; as it proved when his unnecessary dwelling on the ball led to the first Hull goal.

Disappointing though both "Dimi" and Luke Williams were, I won't blame them – both were thrust into the spotlight and expected to perform. More worthy of negativity were the team's attitude and general performance level in the second half.

Following the half-time break, AK attempted to rectify things by immediately bringing on Albert Adomah for Ledesma, and Lukas Jutkiewicz for Luke Williams. Rather, however, than push Emnes out to the wing, advance our central midfield pairing and play Main and Jutkiewicz in tandem, as expected, AK appeared to stick with his more cautious formation and move Main to the left. By the time Jacob Butterfield came on for Emnes, no one appeared to care, the stuffing having long been knocked out of Boro by another Hull goal.

Cup game or not, such a snooze worthy, apathetic display should not be cast aside as a mere footnote. Were David N'Gog's late goal and AK's public criticism more damaging to team morale than we thought they would be? Was it more a question of the right system, but the wrong players?

Amidst this hopefully temporary gloom, there is some good news.

Nigerian international Kenneth Omeruo is set to join Boro on loan from Chelsea as a more than likely replacement for Daniel Ayala (at this moment in time, we have heard no guarantee of Ayala's loan being extended).

While we should of course mistrust all YouTube highlights – we have been there before with Afonso Alves, and they can be very selective indeed – I like what I see in Omeruo. He appears to read the game well, he looks strong, and, on the whole, comes across as the kind of ball playing centre half that might fit AK's high tempo pressing game better than Rhys.

At least there's some light at the end of the Boro tunnel leading up to the Blackpool game. Read more...

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.) Read more...

Aitor Karanka's "New Boro", And The Dreaded Leftover Curse

We close 2013 by praising Aitor Karanka's impact on Boro, while wondering if the transfer window will – or really should – make that much of difference

Yesterday, Aitor Karanka's revitalised Boro gave the Royals a right rollicking to wrap up what was threatening to be our most dismal year in memory on the highest note possible.

Three wins, six goals, three clean sheets, new momentum, newly found confidence, and a new attacking hero. There are few better Christmas presents any Boro fan could ask for.

Before Karanka's first game in charge, I asked three questions:  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?

I think, so far, we can say that the answers to those questions are: yes, yes, and a bit of both.

The attacking full-backs strategy merged with Teesside "tiki-taka" that I thought might work so well at the start of the season has been virtually thrown out the window.

In its place, AK has installed crucial solidity in the centre of the park – witness his preference of Richie Smallwood or the improving Dean Whitehead alongside Grant Leadbitter, as opposed to the more obviously creative Jacob Butterfield.

Neither the engine room nor the back four neglects their defensive responsibilities – especially not the full-backs, who, in Anthony Vickers' words, have "had their wings clipped and their attacking instincts reigned in." Rightly so, I might add.

For it means that any Boro wide man, be it Muzzy Carayol,  Albert Adomah or Emmanuel Ledesma, has a calming, sturdy presence behind them on either flank – currently Jozsef Varga and George Friend, respectively. And I have no doubt that if the likes of Frazer Richardson and Ben Gibson need to be called upon to fill those positions, they will do so with a minimum of fuss. Our defence feels like a collective now, a crucial building block from which Boro first eked out, then enjoyed, their most recent results.

These wins appear to have turned AK into, if he wasn't already, a respected, formidable presence at Boro. Once the pressure was relieved at Millwall, the players began to believe, and freedom of expression on the park is more apparent.

AK seems to have taken a leaf out of both the Javier Clemente and Jorge Valdano books: the former's Basque philosophy of "faith" and "hard work" combined with Valdano's belief that "while the concept of team is very important, you need individuals to go to the next level."

Boro's first and second goals were perfect examples of this: Ledesma was rightly praised for his cross, but Lukas Jutkiewicz's headed knock back for Adomah's beautifully struck shot was also as crisp and decisive as they come. Similarly, Leadbitter's visionary strike followed on from good work by Ledesma. Team work and individualism rolled into one – lovers of The Beautiful Game would find much to admire in AK's Boro at present.

To me, these players, all leftovers from the Mogga regime bar the reassuring presence of Shay Given, have always had potential. Perhaps it just took a managerial change to help them fulfil it.

Alas, there are downsides to this. Whether you deem them to be major or minor is up to you.

Karanka is currently being hailed as a saviour of sorts, but this recent change of fortune, as we know, has arrived unplanned. If Carayol hadn't been forced off with a groin injury, or if Rhys Williams, Frazer Richardson and Stuart Parnaby hadn't been injured or on compassionate leave, would Varga and Ledesma have even had the chance to cement themselves as Boro's new heroes? And would we be celebrating today?

There's also the pressing matter of what to do once the loan spells of both Given and Daniel Ayala end.

Furthermore, AK has not yet built his own team. He has almost entirely taken – let's use those words again – "leftovers from the Mogga regime" and reinvented them in his own image.

Were he to tinker too much in the transfer window, and were this tinkering to prove unsuccessful, crucial momentum could be disrupted and vital team spirit could be damaged.

Of course, as far as Boro managers go, AK is not the sole potential victim of The Dreaded Leftover Curse. Gareth Southgate’s best results in his first season, particularly the 5-1 win over Bolton and 4-1 win over Watford, in 2007, owed a lot to midfielders who had prospered under Steve McClaren (James Morrison, Lee Cattermole, George Boateng and Stewart Downing) and of course a well known Boro strikeforce.

Fast forward to the 3-0 defeat at home to Aston Villa in late 2007, and Boro are described as “half the team they were minus Yakubu and (Mark) Viduka". The leftovers were not adequately replaced – and Boro, and eventually Southgate, paid the price.

Similarly, Gordon Strachan's freak 5-1 triumph over QPR in 2009 and 4-1 win over Doncaster early the next year were mainly inspired by Southgate leftovers, particularly Sean St. Ledger (yes... do you remember his defence-splitting pass at Loftus Road?), Isaiah Osbourne (I know, who?), Gary O'Neil, Mark Yeates, Leroy Lita, Jonathan Franks and of course Adam Johnson.

And even the twelve months of "Moggalution" in 2011 were very dependent indeed on the Strachan spine of Stephen McManus, Nicky Bailey, Barry Robson and Scott McDonald. Even Kevin Thomson (yes!) chipped in with the odd fine pass. As that spine slowly disappeared, so did Mogga's and Boro's confidence – to this day, I wonder if that was a coincidence.

Now, Given aside, Karanka is working with almost an entire collection of Mogganauts.

Perhaps too much tinkering, as a certain Claudio Ranieri once found out, is more trouble than it is worth?

I'll leave you to ponder that as we close 2013. For now, I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Up The Boro!

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