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Boro’s Southgate gets another chance. Does he deserve it?
Most people agree that sacking a manager after a few weeks or a handful of matches is ridiculous, but sometimes chairmen go to the other extreme and exhibit reserves of patience that would be beyond most fans.
Given the frantic pace of the soccer industry, Middlesbrough manager Gareth Southgate can consider himself an extremely lucky man after a season that brought the club just seven league victories, 28 goals and relegation.
Boro chairman Steve Gibson said in a BBC Radio interview this week he was backing Southgate to get the club back in the Premier League next season, vowing not to make the former England international a scapegoat for the club’s relegation.
A lot of people will be wondering why not.
In January 2008, Southgate brought in record signing Brazilian striker Afonso Alves for 12.7 million quid from Heerenveen and let captain George Boateng and fellow midfielder Lee Cattermole go in the close season.
This campaign, Boro struggled to compete in midfield and could not score goals. Alves managed just four all season and despite this problem Egyptian international Mido was allowed to leave on loan, along with another Southgate signing, Marlon King.
Gibson showed similar patience with former England manager Steve McClaren and Bryan Robson. While it is an admirable and rare virtue in football, it certainly has not done Gibson many favours to date.
Newcastle poised for tense finale to relegation soap opera
England’s most popular soap operas thrive on a weekly recipe of misery, doom and gloom that is gobbled up by television viewers seeking some relief from their own trials and tribulations.
In that sense, the final weekend of the Premier League season is quite similar.
With Manchester United already polishing the trophy again after sealing a third consecutive title last week, neutral television viewers are salivating at the prospect of watching the suffering of fans of Middlesbrough, Newcastle United, Hull City and Sunderland as their clubs desperately scarp for top flight survival.
Like the inevitable rubber-neckers at road traffic accidents, there is something cruelly compulsive about the raw emotions of relegation D-Day.
For those poor fans at Villa Park, the KC Stadium, Upton Park and The Stadium of Light, fingernails will be whittled down to nothing as their sides hover between survival and exile from Planet Premier League and all its hype and glamour.
Sadly, there is usually one club that the majority of neutral voyeurs want to see fall off the cliff — and this year they play in black and white stripes.
And it was written.Owen at United!Cheer up Alan Shearer, Oh what can it be, to be a S***E Jordi B*****D – and a S**** Football TEEEEAAAAM!
The sort of result that wins titles: Middlesbrough 0 United 2
In Spain, you often hear players and coaches talking about “the sort of match that decides title races”. More often that not they’re talking about the tricky away game against awkward opposition rather than a high profile match against direct rivals.
Manchester United’s 2-0 win away to Middlesbrough on Saturday was just that sort of game, and just the sort of performance that will leave their rivals utterly deflated.
It was a match that could easily have re-opened the championship. United were playing less than 72 hours after their Champions League semi-final first leg at home to Arsenal and three days before the return in London.
Middlesbrough are desperate for points, as they scrap it out at the bottom of the table, yet Alex Ferguson was able to rest a bunch of players and yet still see his team win with plenty to spare, thanks to goals from Ryan Giggs and and Park Ji-sung.
United still have a couple of potential banana skins with matches to come against Manchester City and Arsenal but this was a real show of authority, especially after Liverpool’s recent defeat here.
So as far as the title race goes, that’s that, isn’t it?
PHOTO: Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs (R) celebrates scoring against Middlesbrough with Federico Macheda, May 2, 2009. REUTERS/Nigel Roddis
We’re still not home and dry Kevin. Two tricky home ties – Man City are always awkward and Arsenal will be baying for blood after we knock them out of the CL. Hull City may well need a win in their final game of the season against us to stay up, they certainly will play out of their skins.
England’s north east goes from hotbed to wasteland
Things are looking grim in the north east, England’s fabled “hotbed of soccer”.
The phrase, if you are interested, was used for many years to describe the passion for football in the region before a scholarly book by reknowned journalist Arthur Appleton “Hotbed of Soccer – the story of football in the North East” was published in 1960 and told a mainly successful story.
If a similar tome was being written today, I’d suggest a more apt title might be “The Frozen Wasteland of Soccer — Under-Achievement, Broken Dreams and Very Few Trophies in the North East.”
A suitable sub-title? “Staring Relegation in the Face in 2009.”
With the end of the English Premier League season fast approaching, Newcastle United and Middlesbrough occupy two of the three relegation places with only seemingly-doomed West Bromwich Albion beneath them.
Sunderland, the region’s other major power, may appear to be safe in 14th spot, but they are only three points above Newcastle and five ahead of Boro.
One online betting service on Tuesday was offering odds of 25-1 that all three north east clubs will go down — and who knows, if West Brom launch the kind of miraculous escape they managed in 2005, that could still happen. (more…)
It’s sad that the north east is of so little influence compared to the old days. But England is still the strongest competition in the world.Too bad that so many clubs are concentrated around London, though.
I agree Dan, but Southgate’s transfer decisions to date have been one of his biggest downfalls as a manager. He is a good coach, but has not been able to attract the right type of player to the Riverside.
Signing flops like King and Alves will have not done his confidence for the new transfer window any good.
I too think it will be make or break for Boro. They either bounce back at the first time of asking or get ready to settle into a good few seasons in the Championship.