Author: Diasboro

Championship 2018-19: Week 10

Tue 2 Oct – 19:45: Ipswich v Boro
Sat 6 Oct – 15:00: Boro v Forest

They say in space no-one can hear you scream, but for those football followers inhabiting the rarefied atmosphere on Teesside, there was still a distinct audible sound of pain emanating from Planet Boro on Saturday following another opportunity missed. Indeed, before the misguided sentence ‘Boro have a chance to go top’ is even completed, the follicles of many are preparing to part company with their keratin proteins in anticipation of hair being once more torn out in frustration. Though it was always tempting fate when launching a superfluous third kit in Real Madrid white that Boro’s Galacticos would put in a performance that never got off the ground – let alone one deemed even remotely out of this world. Still, the sound of the Teesside travelling army singing “we’re the finest team in football, the world has ever seen” may have been evidence that some were perhaps living in a parallel universe.

By far the happiest people on Teesside will possibly have been those who had paid to watch the beam-back from the KCOM stadium at the Riverside and were subsequently refunded after the event was predictably cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances. Although I suspect many of the Boro faithful who had made the trip to Hull may have wished that they could have also been beamed back to Teesside during the half-time interval after the players from both sides had shown little in the way of enterprise. Unexpectedly caught in a Strachanesque time-warp, many spaced-out supporters probably struggled to cling on to consciousness after sympathetically giving each other a Vulcan death grip in an attempt to dull the experience – before gasping “It was football Jim but not as we know it” as they were admitted to sickbay at James T Cook hospital.

It doesn’t take a dilithium crystal ball to see a warped future where a team without creative players fails to create chances. All the vital signs of a team struggling with the alien concept of passing the ball accurately forward were there to see and many have called for the next generation of academy graduates to be given their chance instead. As the conditioning team try to pick the bones out of latest matchday biometric data from the Boro camp, some are anticipating that it’s unlikely to show any signs of life. Whilst the recent performances may have left quite a few stunned, the Boro manager appears unfazed by calls to seek out new life in his squad and boldly go where no Tony Pulis team has gone before. Nevertheless, seeking out the strange new world of attacking football still seems light years away as he’s seemingly a man on a mission of discovering what to try next.

While still averaging 1.9 points per game, Boro remain statistically close to achieving that stellar goal of automatic promotion and if most nervous Boro followers had been offered third spot after ten games, they probably would have bitten your hand off once they’d finished with their fingernails. Though that statistic may be hiding the continued downward trend of points being returned, which once peaked at an average 2.6 per game after the first five matches in comparison to just 1.2 from the last five. Indeed, if Boro lose at Ipswich they will drop below our opponents on Tuesday in the six-game form table – the Tractor Boys are chugging along in 21st and Boro are currently 9th but would likely fall to around 18th following defeat with just 6 points from 6 games.

Of course victory at Portman Road could see Boro climb to top spot and we can once again contemplate an international break staring at the table while we recalibrate our glasses from half-empty to half-full, if not overflowing. Despite losing only one of their last five games, Ipswich remain in the bottom three after failing to register a single victory this season under new manager Paul Hurst. The 44-year old joined the Suffolk club from League Two side Shrewsbury after taking them to both the play-off and EFL Trophy finals last season – though unfortunately they lost both.

Hurst was apparently happy to become Ipswich manager under financial constraints and was said to be comfortable with the £3m transfer budget he was given, which should indicate the potential gulf between the two sides. Although Ipswich have lost four games this season, they have drawn all five of their home games and were unlucky not to win at Birmingham at the weekend after leading 2-0 at half-time. It could be another tight game as Hurst’s side have only conceded three goals in their last four home outings and Boro may find their chances on goal are limited – even by recent standards.

Tony Pulis has not yet settled on a way to play effectively having failed to sign the genuine wide players he coveted in the summer and Boro are struggling to find solutions on how to add creativity to their game. Although Pulis is regarded as old school, he has embraced modern methods and the use of technology for monitoring his players fitness and performance. Perhaps the Boro manager could seek to emulate those in Silicon Valley who design and conceive the ideas and products on which much of our modern sport and lifestyles now depend on. Thinking outside the box, or indeed inside it, is not a trait normally associated with a Tony Pulis team and now may be the time to experiment with the latest trends in the high-tech industry that many use to improve creativity.

It’s now commonplace among the high-performing geeks of Silicon Valley to self-medicate by micro-dosing psychedelic drugs such as LSD and Magic Mushrooms. Many believe it improves their productivity and creativity, with some saying it makes them feel more excited about their work, while others claim it also lifts the fog of depression – though not to be confused with the smog of depression that rarely lifts for Boro followers, which is not so much a condition but a way of life. Whether the club will also contemplate micro-dosing the complimentary pre-match drink in order to get the crowd excited about watching another limited Tony Pulis display is another matter – though it’s probably highly unethical and risks those who may down two or three pints before kick-off hallucinating to the point where they may start seeing imaginary goals.

The practice is reportedly widespread among the Californian elites and it’s prompted Imperial College to undertake a blind trial this month with those workers currently self-medicating. Though just to be clear, a blind trial is not how the Boro recruitment team identify players but involves giving some participants a placebo instead so they don’t know if it’s the real thing or not – which I should repeat is not comparable to the recruitment team’s assessment of players. Incidentally, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann, who first synthesised LSD in 1936 was reported to have micro-dosed the drug into his old age – he actually only died in 2008 at the age of 102 and had claimed a few years earlier that his hallucinogenic days were well behind him, along with that purple dog that kept following him. He referred to LSD as his problem child and was said to have been disturbed by the cavalier use of the drug in the sixties counter-culture.

Nevertheless, putting credence in anecdotal claims of the rich and powerful elites of Silicon Valley, who some claim are exhibiting signs of being borderline psychopaths, is perhaps something that should be taken with a large micro-dose of salt. Not only are some experimenting with self-medication with psycho-active compounds but others, such as the multi-millionaire CEO of several internet start-up companies, Serge Faguet, has embarked on a regime that he labels bio-hacking. It involves technologically assisted monitoring of bodily functions that then automatically sends signals to his smartphone on when he needs to self-administered injections of hormones and a daily regime of popping over 60 capsules with a strict diet and exercise regimes. The aim of the 32-year old is to live for ever and even plans to ultimately merge into a robot to become an ultra human. He also has declared he won’t have children as they are bad ROI (return on investment) and shuns the complication of relationships in favour of keeping several women on special retainers for his physical needs, who he rewards for their time with expensive gifts and paid-for flats – while being quite adamant that they are “definitely not prostitutes”.

Of course, experiencing the sensation of living for ever is available to many on Teesside, as time can sometimes appear to pass so slowly when watching a Boro attack build that it’s often confused with eternity as onlookers wait for something of note to judge the passing of time – though it’s sometimes a fine balance between feeling immortal and also losing the will to live. The early doors of perception were that Tony Pulis was going to open our minds to a brave new world of Championship success. However, current performances may suggest that no-one gets out here alive and the Boro manager may have to get prepared to ride out the storm if his team fail to break on through into the Premier League.

It may just sound like the fantasy world of a disturbed individual seeking immortality but there are indeed very rich powerful people actively pursuing this dream. Self-styled Bond villain and reckless Tweeter, billionaire Elon Musk of Tesla fame and planned human colonisation of Mars, has argued that humans need to become cyborgs to survive the inevitable robot uprising. Those who don’t like the way their bolshie Flymo sometimes approaches them, may be interested to know that Musk is starting work on developing an era of transhumanism with his new brain-computer interface company, Neuralink. Plus former CEO of Google Ventures, Bill Maris, has formed Calico (short for California Life Company), with the single aim to “solve death” and I’m sure he’ll give everything to succeed or at the very least die trying. Also former Facebook president, Sean Parker, declared that because he’s a billionaire he would have the resources to live to 160 and imagined “I’m going to be part of this class of immortal overlords.” Though the most important question is which one of these potential billionaire megalomaniac cyborgs will take over from Steve Gibson as Boro owner if he decides to shun immortality himself.

The acid test for Tony Pulis is whether his team can gain promotion and it has looked in recent games that some of the players appear on a different wavelength as they failed to either turn up or tune in before dropping out of the automatic promotion places. Although it may be too soon to advocate swapping the team coach for a magic bus and resorting to psychedelic micro-dosing in an attempt to find that missing creativity.

Perhaps those Boro followers who decide on making the trip to Ipswich will contemplate the starting line-up as they picture themselves on a train in a station, with plasticine supporters with working class ties, suddenly someone is there at the turnstyle, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes – who then scans their ticket as they are ushered into the away end. A chorus of “Lewis in the side with diamonds”, such as the still rough cut Tavernier, is no doubt what they will be hoping to hear – although Sgt. Pulis may not be quite ready to give his lonely band of strikers some much needed company from midfield and they may have to get by with just a little help from George Friend and Ryan Shotton’s long throws.

Talking of an altered state of mind, the smouldering Aitor Karanka returns to the Riverside on Saturday with his team of still possibly merry men at Forest. The Tricky Trees have made steady if unspectacular progress this season as they sit comfortable in mid table after drawing six and losing just the one game at sixth-place Brentford. Karanka’s side have surprisingly only failed to score in one game this season and that unsurprisingly was against Swansea in a goalless draw. Former Bournemouth striker and last season Villa loanee, Lewis Grabban, has also started finding the net for his new club with four goals in his last three games.

Still, the former Boro manager must be looking rather enviously towards Tony Pulis with just four goals conceded this term – Bilbao Baggins, down in the Nottingham shire, will still surely covet his precious clean sheets. Few will be expecting a goal-fest when these sides meet but hopefully some Boro players will still be highly motivated to put one over on their old gaffer. Anyway, after the spectre of typical Boro revealed itself in all its lack of glory at Hull last Saturday, let’s hope this week sees a return to intensity on the pitch and some signs that creativity can be delivered in more than just microscopic doses.

Championship 2018-19: Week 9

Tue 25 Sep – 19:45: Preston v Boro (EFL Cup)
Sat 29 Sep – 15:00: Hull v Boro

When it comes to surprises, there can be few Boro followers who bore the shocked expressions of disbelief on their faces as they discover that Tony Pulis has now built a team in his image to pragmatically tackle the task ahead. As those anticipating more entertaining football pinned their hopes into the over-inflated balloon of their wider aesthetic aspirations, the barely audible bang was neither unexpected or startling. The Boro manager has primarily built sides not to lose and generally works on the basic principal that if the opposition don’t score they can’t beat you.

Tony Pulis last week proffered the somewhat radical hypothesis that the teams who concede the fewest goals will generally finish in the top two – with the supporting evidence put forward that Wolves and Cardiff had the meanest defences last term after only conceding 39 each. Those fond of the art of extrapolation, will be pleased to hear that if Boro continue in their current vein they will end the season with a mere 15 goals tarnishing the against column, with possibly every one known by name. Nevertheless, many were disappointed with the stalemate at home to Swansea after it turned out to be a missed opportunity to go clear at the top following Leeds first defeat of the season. Though in retrospect, following a game of limited goalmouth action, it was perhaps not unexpected to learn that matches involving both clubs have seen the fewest number of goals so far this season – with Boro’s lucky followers witnessing just one more than the 13 that supporters of Swansea have enjoyed.

It’s hard to envisage under Pulis that defensive solidity will be sacrificed in the quest for finding a more expansive attacking game – especially with only one goal conceded in the last eight games. Scoring goals has been a long-standing issue for Boro and indeed keeping it tight has become the mantra for many a cautious manager on Teesside over the years. Of course, the amazing Aitor Karanka was the embodiment of that game-plan and some may or may not be surprised to see that his Forest side have actually scored the same number of goals as Pulis’s high flyers – though I suspect even more will be surprised to see that this is also the same total of the more attack-minded Tony Mowbray at Blackburn. However, 11 goals each for those former managers is positively prolific compared to both Garry Monk’s Brum and Steve McClaren’s Hoops, who have seen their teams only net a less than magnificent seven – as one of them might say. It’s perhaps a similar curse that quickly turns any previously prolific striker arriving on Teesside into a wandering minstrel, who first loses his mojo, before hanging up his banjo in the cow shed.

Clubs who have aspirations of promotion normally find a way of getting the ball into the back of the net and supporters will be well aware from recent campaigns of how a lack of goals can hinder a push for an automatic spot. Whilst Karanka’s teams were also mean in defence, they often missed out on points due to their failure to trouble the opposition – with many believing only the arrival of Gaston Ramirez subsequently gave his ultra-organised team that improvised creative spark to secure a top two finish. Perhaps it is inevitable once the players have been tutored through many training exercises that their ability to ad-lib is diminished by concentrating on adhering to the instructions of the game-plan hatched by a perfectionist manager.

Until the players have become comfortable in their primary roles on the pitch, we may be waiting a little while yet before we see some fast flowing attacking football start to emerge on it. Though, we shouldn’t think that the likes of Pep and Klopp don’t spend many hours in training honing the apparent instinctive attacking football they regularly serve up. But for teams set-up like Boro, it will be more likely that pouncing on the second ball and taking advantage of mistakes will prove most productive. The problem faced now is that there is little element of surprise when Boro’s big players gather at corners, long throws and free kicks with their rehearsed lines – it’s all about placing psychologically pressure in the minds of defenders and looking to take advantage of errors. Not exactly a blueprint for breath-taking football but still statistically solid in terms of finishing near the top of the table – which is mainly what Championship football is now about for aspiring promotion contenders.

However, Boro once again have appeared less than lethal in front of goal when it matters and maybe a few players would benefit from some shooting practice. It’s now just three goals in our last five games, a creative block made worse by the fact that those were reliant on two dodgy Trotters gifts and an Ayala injury-time steal against the Baggies where he escaped being caught red-handed following suspect control of a stinging cross. Clear-cut opportunities have been at a premium and therefore it will be important to take whatever chances come our way. Glaring misses are the age old problem and it could be anecdotally a close contest with many a supporter’s grandmother as to whom could have done better.

Although, you may have heard this week that some old ladies can indeed be pretty lethal, with reports that great-grandmother Judy Cochran killed a 560lb alligator on her ranch in Texas after blaming it for eating one of her miniature ponies two-years earlier. OK, not quite yet in the Teesside grudge territory – though before any of you start wondering whether it was with her bare hands, I should remind you that in many parts of America you’re patriotically encouraged to take up your right to bear arms instead. She actually dispatched the poor beast with a single shot from a high-powered rifle after uttering the words ‘Don’t mess with Nana’ – something many a grandchild running along the back streets of Middlesbrough will have probably heard as they grew up, though usually without such severe consequences. However, as far as I’m aware, the makers of My Little Pony have no immediate plans to use ‘Don’t mess with Nana’ in their festive advertising campaign this year – which is surely an oversight.

Before many of you think it’s just a typical red-neck family taking the law into their own hands, I believe they are apparently good upstanding citizens with permits and are supporters of WWF – though that’s the World Wrestling Federation not the World Wide Fund for Nature. In addition, they have kindly given the dead ‘gator (as they’re normally called) to the local mayor so he can make some trophy boots from the belly. Incidentally, we also learned that her grandson has also killed a 500lb ‘gator when he was just 5 with his junior-sized shotgun – apparently the force of the recoil from a normal one left him with a cut eye so they had to get him a smaller one. Before you start thinking giving such a young boy a shotgun is completely irresponsible, you’ll be relieved to know he’d been an experienced gun handler after being taught to shoot at four and knows all about fire-arms safety and can even drive an all-terrain vehicle to join in alligator hunts. Whether the good folk on Teesside would be happy to see a five-year old wandering the streets with a shotgun is another matter – especially if he’s being a bit pushy when asking for a squeeze on matchdays!

Talking of lumbering big beasts being on the end of both barrels, Rudy Gestede may be close to returning to action this week and the Riverside faithful will be hoping that he’s unearthed a pair of shooting boots during his enforced absence – alligator skin or otherwise. Though I’m informed by certain specialist websites that the big Benin forward actually wears Nike Mercurial Vapor XII Elite boots, which was possibly not a particularly vital piece of information that many had been living without knowing. Whilst the words ‘mercurial’ or ‘elite’ are seldom mentioned in the same sentence as Gestede, you may be pleased to know that these are the same precision tools worn by Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar and French World Cup sensation Mbappé. So whatever happens on the pitch for the Boro target man, we shouldn’t blame the footwear if the ball ends up in the Riverside stands rather than the goal.

In truth, the options available at the sharp end for Boro are not convincing many that it’s only a matter of time before the floodgates open and the goals begin to flow over the somewhat barren Riverside pitch. Britt Assombalonga has often appeared to be a fish out of water as he regularly flounders as a lone target man under Tony Pulis and usually looks fed to the gills when he’s hooked after failing to make the net bulge. His main rival for the striker’s shirt in Jordan Hugill has offered a more physical battling option but doesn’t appear to have the finesse or even fitness to run opposition defences ragged. Indeed both may only be keeping the shirt warm for perhaps Pulis’s preferred option of the big man from Benin and few will be surprised if Gestede is soon bamboozling opposition defences and team-mates alike as they fail to click with his flicks, kicks and lack of confidence tricks. Though we shouldn’t forget we also have another £7m surplus striker from the Hammers waiting in the wings too – though the chances of him taking a bow anytime soon in the Championship seem remote as he appears to have fallen through the trapdoor on the Boro stage under the direction of Pulis.

Despite not having a goal machine up front, perhaps we should place the blame elsewhere as even average strikers need service before they even get a chance to miss it. The failure to recruit much in the way of creative talent in the summer has been well documented and it seems the subject has been for now brushed under the Hurworth carpet after the recruitment team seemingly pulled the deep-pile rug from under Tony Pulis to leave his plans in an even deeper pile of something steaming.

This has subsequently left the Boro manager continuing with his early-season Plan B of a back-three with wing-backs providing the width instead. To his credit, Ryan Shotton has proved more than useful in the role on the right but George Friend has never looked like he will be as effective on the left after migrating from his earlier back-three role. Most observers know Friend is unlikely to provide too many assists and even the charade of possessing the weapon of mass distraction with the pretend long throw has not convinced many that his floated lobs are nothing more than catching practice for the opposition keeper. Nevertheless, the Boro manager has persisted with the tactic but has now in recent games reverted to a more conventional back four in order to accommodate an extra forward.

That extra forward is Martin Braithwaite, who often looks sharp and busy, with a little more intensity on the ball than those around him. He’s made more attempts on goal than any other Boro player this season in 14 with 7 on target and is currently joint-top scorer with Assombalonga on 3 goals. Having said that, he’s been less prolific since the transfer window ‘misunderstanding’ that nearly saw him leave for Spain but has promised to put it behind him and get his head down. Though whether his stop-start Boro career will begin to look up may depend on what happens around him. The Dane looks to potentially be Boro’s most explosive striker but last season saw him sometimes drift out of games – something if repeated under Pulis may ultimately see him losing his starting place under a manager who probably appreciates work-ethic over ability.

Whether Tony Pulis can find the right combination in midfield to get the crowd on their feet is another matter but I suspect the best three to get the gig in the middle of the park in terms of making the Riverside rock will probably be Barlow, Owen and Orange. Although, officially still a boy band, Take That are now at an age where even Tony Pulis may consider picking them – especially if they play his favourite song ‘Giants’. Though whether just sixty per cent of the original group are still the real deal or just another nostalgia trip hoping to recoup some of the money they had to quietly return to the taxman recently is probably just Teesside cynicism. Those familiar with celebrity tax avoidance schemes may have read that the Take That trio ‘invested’ £66m in an artificial tax-shelter called Icebreaker. Their pleas to HM Customs and Revenues to have a little patience were met with deaf ears as the government agency declared they wanted the £20m owed to them back for good – with Barlow, Owen and Orange no doubt innocently declaring “Whatever I said, whatever I did I didn’t mean it.” Incidentally, it’s a pity that the trio opted against renaming themselves with the initials of their surnames, as it will prevent certain elements among the Riverside faithful fully enjoying the occasion by not being able to indulge themselves by shouting BOO when they walk off the pitch at the end.

Back to footballing matters, this week sees a return to action in the reserve competition that is Mr Caraboa’s dead buffalo cup. Naturally, in a manner befitting to the sponsors, the object of the exercise is to progress while keeping the energy levels of the First XI intact – something Tony Pulis has been closely monitoring since the international break after he rested both Fry and Besic for having below par biometric data during the Norwich game. Boro make the trip to a Preston side that are surprisingly languishing at the foot of the Championship after failing to win since the first game of the season. Last season they were known for being a defensively solid side and only conceded more than one goal in a game on eight occasions as they ended up finishing one place outside the play-offs. However, they’ve been leaking goals badly this campaign, conceding three goals in each of their last three games and two goals in each of the four before that. Alex Neil is under pressure to turn their form around and will hope the cup offers them some respite – they did in fact win at Leeds in round one so Boro will hopefully not take them too lightly.

For those in the squad who have struggled to get a game recently, it offers an opportunity remind Tony Pulis that they can do a job – with perhaps Lewis Wing and Paddy McNair looking to make an impression. It’s possible that Jordan Hugill will fancy playing against his old club but he may be kept back in preparation for the game on Saturday, with perhaps a seat on the bench instead. It’s likely man’s man Danny Batth will make his debut and possibly Sam McQueen will also get a start if he’s still eligible after being named as an unused sub for Southampton in their win over Brighton. Other players hoping for a run out will be strikers Rudy Gestede and Ashley Fletcher, but it will most likely on the whole be a young side deployed. The prize on offer for the winners will be a potential last sixteen tie against a big Premier League team and a return to visibility – though chances of sneaking under the radar into the last eight are diminishing with only three other ties not involving top tier opposition.

Whilst I’m sure Tony Pulis will be keen to progress to the last 16, he’ll no doubt be fully prioritising Saturdays trip to Hull. The Tigers sit just one place and one point above the relegation zone after already losing six games this campaign, including their last two on the road at Reading and Wigan. It should be seen by Boro as an opportunity to pick up three more points to secure their place in the top two, in what has become quite a congested table. With Leeds and Boro tied on 18 points at the top, West Brom sit a point behind in third and then come those in the play-off positions on 16 – though only three points separate Sheffield United in fourth to Swansea in fourteenth. Once again the Championship is proving to be a tight affair and Boro will need to remain focused to keep ahead of the pack. This weekend sees the season reach the ten-game mark and the traditional time to assess how the season is going but the Boro manager claims he never looks at the table until after 15 games. Defeat would give Tony Pulis a haul of just 5 points from 5 games and could lead to some talking down of promotion chances. Though with three winnable games on paper before the next international break, now is surely the time to apply the pressure.

Championship 2018-19: Week 8

Wed 19 Sep – 19:45: Boro v Bolton
Sat 22 Sep – 15:00: Boro v Swansea

As many grandparents on Teesside waited somewhat impatiently for an end to the international break, they stared into a distant spot on the horizon with a twinkle in their eye, as they envisaged telling stories of a time when they remembered the long gone days of ‘Typical Boro’. The young and innocent question of “What was it like?” was in the end never asked as instead they were told to wake up and smell the coffee. Well unfortunately it’s still the greatest story never told after many a daydreaming Boro fan, young or old, felt a rude awakening as Carrow Road became the latest manifestation of the curse of missed opportunity. The same eleven men who had two weeks earlier looked purposeful and assured as they bossed an irresistible Leeds team on their own patch, contrived to give a disjointed ponderous display against a Canaries side looking for breathing space above the relegation zone.

There had been little to indicate that this new stable-looking team who had sent us into the break with a powerful solid showing against promotion pace-setters Leeds would in the end wobble at Norwich. Perhaps they thought they’d done the hard work and could expect an easier ride this time – the intensity that had been a feature of the 500-minute shut-out was more in the summer breeze category than anything approaching the storming performances before the pause in proceedings. Boro were supposed to be the hungry Sylvestor in comparison to Norwich’s Tweety – although those who thought they saw a pussy cat were not mistaken, it simply rolled over and had it’s tummy tickled before taking flight from Carrow Road empty handed with Tony Pulis left spitting feathers instead. It was complacency that killed the cat this time, not curiosity, as Boro looked disinterested in taking three points for most of the game.

At least this week offers the chance for Boro to put behind them “one of those days”, as Tony Pulis chose to euphemistically label the disappointment in Norfolk before quickly replacing his cap to hide his bad hair. Most will be hoping it won’t escalate beyond the one as it will be less easily dismissed if a bad day at the office turns out to be a week off sick. There are perhaps legitimate questions on whether Boro were set up in a way that would hurt Norwich, after all that’s now just one controversially controlled Daniel Ayala stoppage time goal in our last three Championship outings. Preventing the opposition scoring is still only half of the exercise and Boro should perhaps be showing more gusto and adventure against teams who have previously made heavy weather of keeping out the opposition.

Perhaps it’s just as well ‘Tony’ didn’t make the Met Office’s list of storm names this year as his team failed to blow away the opposition or cause them any serious damage – instead they just huffed and puffed as they left many wondering if their promotion credentials were made of straw. Incidentally, ‘Gareth’ was one of the most popular chosen by the UK public in the ‘Name our Storm’ scheme this year, which I imagine will probably be a much underrated storm that will apologise to the nation for the damage after conducting itself impeccably before turning out to be overblown and not too historic. Also soon to be battering Britain is Storm Deirdre, whilst it doesn’t sound too ferocious it may cause some problems but will possible solve others – whereas Storm Idris will no doubt be much hyped in the media before probably in the end being contentiously overlooked as the next big thing.

In midfield, Mo Besic also seemed to have one of those days where he was constantly demanding the ball but failed to do anything meaningful with it – it was reminiscent of a declining Grant Leadbitter last season who often orchestrated neat triangles to nowhere with his equally ponderous partners in crime. Jonny Howson was also having flashbacks to his last season self as he seemed confused and demotivated by seeing the yellow shirts of his former club around him. The lack of dynamism on show made many wonder why, after previously impressing with his overall game, Lewis Wing has surprisingly seen himself out of contention and is now become a regular unused sub on the bench. Wing may begin to feel he doesn’t have a prayer of recapturing his starting berth with the arrival of Besic and Saville adding to a congested midfield of options available to his manager. Matters may even be made worse if Pulis opts for Braithwaite and Downing playing alongside a main striker – particularly at home where Boro must surely take the initiative.

Though one new arrival, Danny Batth, has had Tony Pulis praising him as “a man’s man” and that “You can’t have too many of them”. Does that mean Dael ‘the young lad’ Fry may be about to start keeping Lewis Wing company on the bench? The worry for Fry is that he was singled out for criticism over the Norwich goal and may fear a return to what happened under Monk after making a rare error. Though what exactly is a man’s man? The definitions on offer are varied and ranging from: ‘They are trusted by other men because they seem to represent the man’s perspective’, to the more macho ‘Can fell a tree and drop it right where he wants’ and ‘He knows how to kill, hang, and dress a kill’ or the slightly more Trumpish sounding ‘He believes what he believes and he doubts what he doubts’. Though looking at some players, it looks like they struggle to even dress themselves, let alone a kill – plus chopping down trees is probably not necessarily something you get to prove your masculinity with too often in football and has yet to be included in the Opta stats.

I expect George Friend and Ryan Shotton would define it slightly differently after their ‘Bake-Off’ challenge earlier this year, in which you may recall they went head-to-head in the Coral-sponsored event to make the best Victoria sponge cake. Shotton proved to be the man on this occasion as his carefully positioned raspberries (no not another euphemism) won over the judges – he also probably gains extra points on the man’s man measure by also co-owning a pub with his father-in-law, though it’s possible he may perhaps get points deducted for having a ponytail. Still, it looks like Danny Batth may be the one with the recipe for success under old-school Tony.

Sadly, the Championship is anything but a cakewalk and the Boro manager made it clear this week how difficult it was compared to the Premier League to maintain momentum. There are 14 occasions in the season where Boro will play two games a week and how the club deal with that will ultimately decide their fate. This week is one of those weeks (as opposed to days) and first up is Bolton on Wednesday. The Trotters had got off to a surprisingly good start this campaign and were unbeaten after four games before it was ended with a 3-0 defeat at home to Sheffield United. Bolton then recovered from 2-0 down at Deepdale to get a draw against Preston before losing again at home against QPR to give Steve McClaren another much-needed win.

The real problem for Bolton though is not on the pitch as problems off it have seen them facing the threat of going into administration and being deducted 12 points. The whole crisis appears to stem from a £5m loan that was taken out from a finance company called BluMarble when Sports Shield took over Bolton in 2015. The current chairmen of Bolton, Ken Anderson, has been in dispute over the terms of the repayment and subsequently failed to reach an agreement by a deadline set by the finance company. BluMarble appear to have lost theirs as they are now reportedly seeking to put the club into administration and are prepared to finance the process in an attempt to force new ownership of the club – with an American billionaire reportedly interested. Bolton’s debts at £13m are nothing too major by Championship standards so it may as yet be possible to avoid the severe penalty that going into administration entails. You would think it wouldn’t be too difficult for the current owners to sell the club to an interested billionaire – probably a far easier task than Boro had in persuading certain players to move to the North-East.

Those Boro supporters of a nervous disposition who are worried about former players coming back to haunt the club better look away now – They have of course the Redcar Rock, David Wheater and former Boro captain Gary O’Neil, along with academy old boys Andrew Taylor and Jonathan Grounds, plus strikers Yanic Wildschut and former loanee Sammy Ameobi all waiting to prove a point. It appears way too many ex-players to stop them invoking the inevitable curse of the footballing gods – the only hope is that they all get in each other’s way as they queue up impatiently in an attempt to put one over on their former club.

A victory in midweek will perhaps help settle the nerves before Tony Pulis faces one of the newly relegated sides on Saturday. Swansea were once viewed as the model for Boro and the club to emulate as they played attractive football on a budget. They were promoted to the Premier League in 2012 and renowned for making astute signings who performed well, such as Gylfi Sigurðsson, Michu and Wilfried Bony – though we may overlook their reported £5m purchase of Marvin Emnes on the grounds of diminished responsibility. They held their own in the top flight and managed to beat several of the top-four clubs before qualifying for Europe and winning the League Cup. Their decline seemed coincided with rapidly changing managers with Michael Laudrup replaced by then defender Garry Monk, who initially succeeded and took them to their highest finish of 8th before being ejected in favour of Italian Francesco Guidolin. The club were taken over by an American consortium, who installed the hapless former US national coach Bob Bradley as manager but he didn’t last three months. Then came Paul Clement who saved them from relegation in 2016-17 but a bad start the following season saw him replaced by ex-Owl Carlos Carvalhal instead of old boy Garry Monk as many had expected – you may remember both managers were sacked following Boro’s 2-0 victory over Sheffield Wednesday just before Christmas.

These days Boro are more emulating their Welsh neighbours Cardiff in terms of style and management as they attempt a more pragmatic route back to the promised land. Swansea have had a relatively stable beginning to their Championship season, losing just the once at home to Bristol City and winning three and drawing three. They installed as manager Graham Potter, who had taken Swedish outfit Östersund from the fourth to the first tier – he got the job in Sweden on the recommendation of former Swansea coach Roberto Martinez. He’s regarded as a modern coach with alternative ideas, which included encouraging his players to perform in theatre and musicals to get them out their comfort zone. Whether we’ll see a better class of diving and injury feigning at the Riverside is unclear but let’s hope they are not on song and dance around our defenders. Potter is also fond of switching formations around during games and the game may turn into some kind of tactical jousting contest between him and Pulis as they look to demonstrate their abilities as coaches.

Two home games will hopefully see Boro looking to get back to winning ways but the unexpected defeat at Norwich has certainly caught some on Teesside by surprise. The risk of meltdown is usually never far from the minds of Boro followers, but having gone over 500 minutes without even experiencing a conceded goal, it left many completely unprepared of how to deal with the massive bombshell of defeat. Some are still struggling to come to terms with this potential existential threat and one wonders if the club should possibly have warned us on what precautions to take by issuing a leaflet of what to do in such unforeseen circumstances. Perhaps they could even draw inspiration from those 1970s government public information films that gave practical steps on what people should do in the comparable devastating event of something like a nuclear attack.

It’s perhaps important to remember, unlike nuclear armageddon, defeat is not the end of the world – it may just seems like it for a fleeting moment. The Championship is once again proving that any team can beat any other and nobody as yet appears to be running away from the pack. The top ten bar Leeds, who are sitting just one point clear at the summit, are only separated by three points and this week may prove to be pivotal in terms of whether Boro can regroup and get back to winning ways. The early warning sounded at Norwich shouldn’t be ignored but it’s perhaps still too early to head for the bunker and prepare for a nuclear winter.

Championship 2018-19: Week 7

Sat 15 Sep – 15:00: Norwich v Boro

Following a rather hectic August with eight league and cup fixtures packed into the opening few weeks all the fun and excitement ground to a halt while the League of Nations gathered to prevent a domestic fixture being played in anger. A time to reflect perhaps on whether all the right bodies managed to arrive in all the right places through the various random windows with seemingly random deadlines to buy, borrow and even pretend to borrow before buying – or indeed refuse to buy when all you wanted to do was borrow. At least the sight of Boro sitting tight at the top of the Championship with Leeds has prevented many asking the pertinent question of why Boro failed to re-invest a greater chunk of their £40m plus transfer gains on adding much-needed individual flair to a functional team.

A post-transfer deadline Tony Pulis has dutifully batted away criticism on the recruitment front and has frequently been supportive of his chairman’s spending. Interestingly, following the defeat in the play-offs against Aston Villa, Pulis declared “I know what we need and I know what’s necessary. I won’t waste Steve’s (Gibson) money – he’s spent an awful lot of money”. OK spending and wasting are two different things entirely, so it’s possible he may have been directing that comment at previous purchases. Though it’s a familiar theme that the Boro manager often refers to Steve Gibson as having spent £50m of his money last season on players. What he overlooks is that the club also raised over £40m in player sales to leave an estimated net spend of around £5-8m. Should we read anything into this spinning of spending or has the club decided a process of belt tightening is needed in order to improve the bank balance?

If the reason for failing to land high-profile targets is put down to the club prioritising getting value from the market then it may well be a sensible approach to running a football club. Though let’s not pretend the manager had to sell before he could buy this season due to the need of recouping a large portion of the £50m that Monk spent. The sales of Ben Gibson and Traore came as no surprise to many, the club also received an acceptable offer for Bamford and even the sale of Braithwaite was sanctioned too. The question will remain for some whether or not at some point the Boro manager will be given those banked funds to spend at a later date – though he should definitely not waste them.

Before wandering minds return to the long domestic Championship race ahead, those preoccupied with international events may still be contemplating how a group of three teams constitutes a ‘League’ in any meaningful way – it’s even barely a group and just one more than a tie. OK, the Champions League has been getting away with that particular misnomer for a couple of decades now, as the accepted definition of league is described as a group of teams who play each other over a specific period of time. So playing just two of the other eleven teams in your league doesn’t tick that pedantic box that also regards the baseball World Series as a local affair. The whole exercise was supposed to prevent meaningless international friendlies but having groups of three teams has now left England without a ‘competitive’ midweek fixture as Croatia play Spain – resulting in the arrangement of a meaningless friendly against the Swiss instead. It may be too soon to raise a sheepish hand and claim to have spotted a structural flaw in UEFA’s cunning plan – especially as many are still getting over being patronised by TV presenters telling viewers it’s all too complicated to explain how the tournament works. Some are instead forced to Google ‘how does the Nations League work’ – though in truth few even care. They just want the break to end.

The summer recruitment has seen the Boro squad probably reshaped out of necessity rather than design, though it remains to be seen who will become important components of the Tony Pulis heavy-duty functional machine as the season progresses. Aden Flint has already established himself as Ben Gibson’s replacement and looks set to form a central back-three with Fry and Ayala. Danny Batth arrived late under the radar from Wolves to offer further defensive back-up, plus with Friend and Shotton both capable of playing in a central three, it should offer enough cover. Southampton youngster Sam McQueen has also moved to Teesside on loan in the hope of gaining regular football and looks like cover for left wing-back or possibly a left midfield option – though his first-team outings last season amounted to less than 180 minutes spread over seven games so he may still not be match-fit. While Paddy McNair arrived from Sunderland as a central midfielder, he appears to be now being pencilled in as possible right wing-back cover after being overlooked in favour of both Mo Besic and Lewis Wing. With Howson and Clayton both being in excellent form, it may be a waiting game for McNair to stake his claim. Leadbitter has probably now dropped to understudy for Clayton and will probably get few opportunities this term.

Less clear is what will happen in the forward positions, Boro appear to have no stand-out striker with Britt working hard but not looking clinical enough to spearhead a promotion push. The arrival of Jordan Hugill on loan from West Ham is probably going to provide Assombalonga’s with his main competition for a start but the Boro-born striker still looks a little rusty and more of a nuisance than a threat. Whether a fit-again Rudy Gestede will be given a chance to impress up front is hard to say but Pulis seems to quite like having the big target man leading the line. It’s also doubtful if Ashley Fletcher can become anything more than a peripheral figure and he probably only remained at the Riverside because other targets didn’t arrive. At least Martin Braithwaite remains and had looked our most committed forward until he asked for a move to Spain. As it turned out, the interest in the Dane wasn’t matched by any serious numbers being offered by potential buyers and Pulis expects the player will now get his head down and work hard for the team – at least until the January window opens.

Though in terms of creativity or pace, Boro don’t appear to have much at their disposal and are now over-reliant on Stewart Downing continuing with his good start to the season as he rolls back the proverbial years. The other main option appears to be George Saville, who the club will pay a substantial fee of around £7m in January to make the move permanent. Millwall manager Neil Harris described it as a “ridiculous offer” that was too good to turn down for a player they paid only £350,000 for 12 months earlier. Boro fans will be hoping the former Chelsea academy graduate will justify the price-tag but that kind of figure has become the club’s standard punt price in recent seasons. Although, he was the Lion’s joint-top scorer last season with 10 goals in 44 games, a 1-in-4 ratio, which he also repeated the season before at Wolves with 5 goals in 19 appearances. I suspect a similar return for Boro will make him a fans favourite, though much will depend on where he slots in or whether he quickly adjusts to life on Teesside.

Despite some new arrivals, Tony Pulis will have ultimately been disappointed he couldn’t recruit the wide players he had desired this summer. A last gasp loan deal for Albert Adomah fell through when the former Boro favourite insisted on making the deal permanent in January – which was unsurprising given some of the names his brother had called his Villa manager Steve Bruce on social media. Whether the club had previously targeted the right players is debatable but the criteria appeared to be based on those who had previously worked with the Boro manager at Palace and had only recently recovered from long-term injuries. Though it seems Yannick Bolasie and Jason Puncheon also had something else in common – neither of them wanted to move to the North-East. Not exactly a minor detail when profiling new recruits and perhaps best not left until the last question of the interview. Once Bolasie had done the maths and discovered Birmingham was much nearer to London he opted for Villa and left Pulis waiting for a courtesy call to inform him of his decision – perhaps he eventually sent a SMS with a sad-face Emoji followed by a thumbs down one.

With Jason Puncheon also opting to stay in London to fight for his place in Palace’s Caraboa Cup squad, it will mean he’ll not be carrying out his community service on Teesside. It will come as an obvious disappointment to those in need of litter being picked up and will no doubt also leave a local group building dry-stone walls a man light. Pulis had rated his former player quite highly and once said “Punch could be anything he wanted to be, he has got the tools to be a top player” – though in hindsight it’s perhaps an unfortunate nickname for someone ending up in court on an assault charge. Sadly, the Palace winger’s decision to stay put has robbed the Riverside faithful of seeing him link up with the big man Gestede in what could have become the Punch and Rudy show as they demonstrated to their team-mates “that’s the way to do it”. Teesside could have benefited from a bit of traditional 16th century knockabout theatre orchestrated by the veteran puppet-master Pulis. If I recall correctly, historians believe Mr Punch was based on a character called ‘Pulisinella’, who was the manifestation of the Lord of Misrule and a mythological Trickster figure. Folklore claim this figure “exhibited a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and used it to play tricks or otherwise disobey normal rules and conventional behaviour” – or in other words, ‘Old School’.

Though when it comes to persuading footballers to join your club, it may be for some that their priority is not what happens on the pitch but instead the potential for enjoying the lifestyle and being on the guest list of different kinds of clubs altogether. Perhaps for those on comfortable contracts, who are not quite destined for Champions League clubs or a career of winning titles and medals, the need for self-affirmation by displaying their ‘achievements’ is instead confined to simply showing off their wealth and minor celebrity status. It was not too long ago that owning a Ford Escort XR3i with alloy wheels was the status symbol of choice for young footballers to show they had arrived. However, with more money now raining down on wealth-soaked players it has meant they now need more impressive cars, even more extravagant haircuts, sharper suits and less space being left on their bodies for under-achieving flesh-coloured skin. The echo chamber that this nouveau riche elite find themselves in demands they have the right to reverberate their wealth loud and proud to distinguish them from those cast adrift in the austere normal world outside their cosseted bubble.

Of course, not all footballers fall into this trap of an ostentatious lifestyle but the pressures to conform to the required image may have made many make ill-conceived impulsive decisions. Peter Crouch revealed this week why he once gave up his brand new Aston Martin after only a week. The Stoke striker recalled of how after signing for Liverpool and playing for England he finally thought he’d made it, so decided to ditch his Renault Megane for a top-of-the-range flashy sports car. The eventual decision to part with his trophy car and take a hefty financial hit wasn’t because of the daily struggle to get his six-foot-seven frame in and out of it. Rather it was down to one day arriving at a set of traffic lights, wearing his shades, trying to look cool with his arm resting out of the open window as the car stereo thumped out electronic dance music. As Crouch proudly turned to the side to look at the car standing alongside him, he saw that the driver giving him a look of sheer disgust was none other than Roy Keane, who then sped off from the lights leaving him feeling the smallest he’s ever felt. Crouch said after glancing at himself in the car mirror, he suddenly realised it was not him and sold the car a few days later.

Still he can perhaps console himself that even people more powerful than the former Manchester United captain, have been recently seeking to emulate his style. It was generally assumed when it came to robotic dancing few could match Peter Crouch’s famous goal celebration – however, Prime Minister Theresa May showed us last week that while she may not have all the Brexit moves or can pull the right shapes to impress Brussels, her hopefully unchoreographed efforts in South Africa have proved she can indeed dance like no one wished they were watching. Not content with wowing the school children of Cape Town with her ‘Maybot’ rendition, she continued where she left off with another ‘impromptu’ robo-bop with a group of scouts in Nairobi.

All of which has left many wondering if the UK has been left with no alternative but to dance around the world for trade deals as the negotiations on leaving the EU begin to creak even more than the PM’s knees. Of course, it may just be a carefully contrived plan to see off a leadership challenge from Boris Johnson as she tries to outmanoeuvre him in the looking like an idiot stakes – something the electorate apparently give great credence too as a sign of normality. Not to be outdone, it’s rumoured that Jeremy Corbyn and the NEC are planning to form a circle then perform their rendition of the Horah at the up-coming Labour Party conference, possibly in full orthodox Jewish costume, in a bid to once and for all put the whole antisemitism episode behind them.

Whether the replicant PM risks been hunted down by Harrison Ford for her Maybot moves as she denies ever dreaming of electric sheep while running through fields of genetically-modified wheat is perhaps for another blog. Though, we were once again powerfully reminded this week that the opening scenes to the cult movie Blade Runner were inspired by ICI Wilton when the first episode of the docu-soap ‘The Mighty Redcar’ appeared on the small screen. Whereas Ridley Scott’s film portrayed a dystopian future, the story of a struggling town in the North-East brought into stark reality the dystopian present for many of the young people feeling forgotten in the quest to fulfil their modest dreams.

The contrast between the meagre resources available to many on Teesside and those bestowed upon the heroes of their local football team remind us of how great the gulf in wealth has grown over the last few decades. It’s possible both may have even started life on the same streets, though the value given to being able to play a sport well has been driven up by the market in a seemingly unburstable bubble, fuelled by the satellite TV subscriptions of the masses to leave them a world apart. Maybe a little simplistic to compare the few at the very top of their profession to the many left behind, but it puts into context that the game of football has moved on from its working-class roots and has become an elite sport performed by the new elite.

Living your dreams through the eyes of the rich and famous is nothing new, though the cult of celebrity and fame has left many young people to believe their best chance in life is to emulate them. In times past, being good at football or cricket in a working-class town was an escape from a life down the mines or back-breaking toil in the traditional heavy industries. However, the dream being sold now is the same as winning the lottery and it’s not really something that the overwhelming majority can expect will be a realistic outcome. Today, fulfilling an ambition to become a top professional footballer offers wealth beyond imagination but for nearly all who embark on the journey it will end in failure. In his book ‘No Hunger in Paradise’, Michael Calvin claims that of the 1.5 million boys who play organised youth football in England only 180 will make it as a Premier League player – which is a success rate of just 0.012 per cent. In comparison, professor Stephen Nelson has calculated the chances of getting killed by a meteorite at about 0.0004%. So the good news for aspiring young footballers is that you’re 30 times more likely to become a Premier League player than being killed by a meteorite – though the bad news for those banking on winning the lottery is that you’re nearly six times more likely to be killed by a meteorite instead.

Thankfully the odds on Boro’s dream of playing in the Premier League are much more favourable after their unbeaten start to the season with Sky Bet now barely offering 5/2 on promotion for Tony Pulis’s team. Though the pessimists on Teesside looking for value in the market may anticipate a decent return with Boro standing at 200/1 to be relegated. The result at Elland Road was an important measure of the club’s promotion credentials and there was definitely signs of a team in Tony Pulis’s image being on display. Boro looked like an imposing big team compared to Leeds and perhaps not many opposition outfits will deal with our sheer physical presence. A glance through some of the Leeds fan forums showed a distinct lack of irony on display as most were quick to castigate Boro as nothing more than a physical dirty team of giants who wouldn’t let them play their football – at least it demonstrated which supporters were most pleased with the result if not aware of their club history.

Next up is a trip to Carrow Road to play a Norwich team that have only managed one win in their opening six games and have leaked 12 goals – with 9 of those coming against Leeds, Sheffield United and West Brom. The Canaries five points have been picked up against Birmingham, Preston and Ipswich – none of whom have won any of their last five games. Norwich have actually scored as many goals as Boro with both teams firing 9 a piece but the Teessiders have now gone over 500 minutes since Randolph last had to pick the ball out of his net. On paper it looks like Boro will be looking to bank another three points but the Championship is notorious for punishing the complacency of teams who believe they have enough to win.

A hard-fought point at Leeds will count for little if Boro fail to see off less dangerous opposition. Perhaps Boro supporters may be checking the odds on Ayala and Howson scoring on their return to Carrow Road – though others may be more worried about a certain Jordan Rhodes being the first to breach the Boro back line since Tony Pulis made his first half-time team-talk of the season at the Den.

Despite the angst over missed targets who could maybe offer something different and the loss of individual match-winners like Adama and Bamford, the truism that football is a team game is perhaps reflected in Boro’s performance so far this season. Whether it’s sport, business or even politics, successfully working together will normally improve your chances of achieving mutual goals – unless of course you prefer to gamble on individual brilliance and get extremely lucky!

The latest in a series of profiles and interviews, Orginal Fat Bob gives his personal view on the life and career of a footballing guest, before sitting down for a chat and asking a few questions. Our Diasboro special guest this week is Neil Maddison.

1. The Overview – the man and his career

I see Neil Maddison at most of the Boro home games, where he, like a lot of former Boro players, acts as a matchday ambassador and host at the Riverside Stadium. He confidently walks the corridors with a smile and a handshake for all those that are pleased to see this friendly and personable ex-Middlesbrough footballer. He’s back home amongst friends, but don’t be fooled by this nice guy appearance, as he is a determined cookie underneath. He has the reputation of telling the plain unvarnished truth, straight, how it really is, in his other role since the 2013-14 season as a co-commentator and match summariser for BBC Tees.

Neil Maddison arrived at Boro in 1997 from Southampton and
scored 4 goals in 55 appearances before leaving to join Darlington

He now has a new job at the Boro, whilst still combining these other roles and during this interview we shall find out more about his day-to-day duties at Middlesbrough Football Club.

After signing for Southampton as a trainee in 1984, he eventually joined Boro for a fee of £250,000 in 1997. After eight seasons and 185 appearances in the Premier League with Southampton and Middlesbrough. He did go on loan to Barnsley and Bristol City, before he eventually returned to play for his home town club Darlington and retired in 2007. Although he was known as a midfielder, he has played in all outfield positions, which makes him a genuine all- rounder.

After he stopped playing professional football, he was involved with Darlingon, in a coaching and joint acting manager capacity and was their Centre of Excellence manager until the club folded in 2012.

He established a football coaching academy in the area called; The Premier Player Football Academy, where he was the Head of Outfield Coaching. Amongst other familiar names at the Academy, they included: Mark Proctor who is the Director of Football, Graham Kavanagh and Phil Stamp who are the Lead Coaches.

He was also the Academy Director at Middlesbrough College Sport’s Football Academy where my eldest Grandson sometimes played for him. I also see Neil at a lot of junior football games, where he watches his son play and I see my other grandson play in opposition, at League and at District level, so we come into contact quite a bit.

2. The Interview – a quick chat

OFB: Congratulations on your new role at Middlesbrough Football Club, can you tell us how that came about?

NM: I just got a phone call out of the blue, from the club, to come and have a chat and it all went from there really. I started at Middlesbrough’s Rockliffe Training Complex on the 2nd July and I’m loving every minute.

OFB: What is your job title, and can you outline your day to day duties at the club?

NM: I’m “Ambassador and Player Welfare,” that’s my title at the club.

The Duties are looking after all our loan players, making sure they are being watched every 6 weeks and keeping in touch with them on a regular basis. I’m also doing the linking in with the local leagues at junior level, i.e. the TJFA. I’m offering my services to go and coach in their clubs at any level and to make strong links with them. I must confess that I can’t wait to get started with this part of my job role, as I love coaching and watching young players develop.

Neil Maddison returned to the club in a role that sees him looking after loan players welfare and linking up with the local leagues at junior level

OFB: It must be a great feeling to be back in professional football, can you see your role developing and who do you report to?

NM: I can’t tell you how happy I am to be back at Rockcliffe. This is a fantastic club and it has always given young players a chance if they are good enough. At the moment, I’m just loving my role and doing my best that I can do. I report to Craig Liddle.

OFB: You started your career as a professional footballer with Southampton as a trainee in 1984, how did they manage to scout you and get you agree to join?

NM: Southampton had a very good scouting team in the North East and it all started from there. I was playing in a district team for Darlington and a scout called Jack Robson (I knew Jack well – OFB) spotted me and the rest is history.

OFB: Where did you stay? Did you rent, or did you live in digs?

NM: I was lucky enough to live with a family, whom I still speak to today. They were brilliant to us! Me and Shearer that is. It was just like living at home. I’m actually a godparent to their daughter’s child.

OFB: You have been quoted as saying you persuaded Alan Shearer to stay at Southampton could you tell us how it happened?

NM: It was our first Xmas back in the North East, so we were back with our families. I was feeling pretty much the same as Alan, we missed home a lot and it was hard to get ready and go back down after Xmas, back to Southampton. Alan rang me at my home and said I’m not going back. I just said to him

“You get on the train and I will see you at Darlo.”

So, I went to the station and the train pulls up and there he is, sat on the train. It was the best decision we have ever made!

OFB: Who was your favourite junior player at Southampton and others that you have played with?

NM: Shearer was class as were a lot of the young lads. I was lucky to play in the Saints youth team, as it was full of top players, notably the Wallace brothers Rod and Ray, Shearer, Le Tissier, Franny Benali, Jeff Kenna, Jason Dodd, all these boys played at the top level.

OFB: Who were the best and worst trainers of all the teams that you have played with?

NM: I really don’t remember any to be Honest.

OFB: Southampton had a conveyor belt of talent, who were the names who made the headlines when you were there?

NM: The lads that I’ve said before, all top boys and most of whom I keep in touch with today.

OFB: Who did you room with for away matches at Southampton and Boro?

NM: We used to change room-mates a lot down in Southampton, but at the Boro it was Stampy, Higgy, and Festa.

Neil played alongside one of the biggest jokers ever to pull on a Boro shirt
in Gazza, who had him in stitches with stories of what he got up to

OFB: Who were the jokers in the teams?

NM: I loved a joke, but most of the lads did, Gazza was the joker when I was at Boro

OFB: Can you tell us any amusing anecdotes or pranks that were played?

NM: My times at the Boro were priceless when Gazza was about. He lived with Andy Townsend for 6 months and sat next to Andy in the changing rooms. Every day he came in and just sat and chuckled away and used to tell me what he got up to. I was in stitches most of the time. I’m sure you have heard them all LOL!

OFB: Whose boots did you clean as an apprentice and who cleaned yours?

NM: I actually cleaned Jon Gittens boots when I was an apprentice early on and then for a pro called Gordon Hobson. He was sponsored by Hummel and we wore the same size boots, so he gave me a few pairs! Beautiful boots they were.

OFB: Did you try and emulate your style of play, on any individual player who played in your position?

NM: I never really tried to play like any other player. I scored 44 goals for the youth team one season and most were with my head. I was decent in the air and used to get in the box as much as possible.

OFB: What was your most memorable game, your own individual performance and best experience with the fans?

NM: The best game by a million miles was for the Boro at the 1998 Coca Cola Cup Final. Although we got beat in extra time 2-0, I will never forget walking out at Wembley. It was incredible, just thinking about it gives me goosebumps. And then thinking about the game itself, it was just a great, great experience. (I flew back from Argentina just for the weekend for that game – OFB)

OFB: What was your worst game or experience and why?

NM: Ha! you never remember the bad games…

OFB: Is there a game that you wished you had played in, either for Boro, or another team?

NM: No there are none to be honest I had a great career.

OFB: Who was in your opinion the best manager that you have ever had and why?

NM: I was lucky to have had some good ones, Souness was brilliant for me, I loved him. Bryan Robson was top drawer, but my favourite of all, was the late Alan Ball. He was a great motivator, but also a good coach. I loved his training sessions they were always high tempo and he always joined in. He was very competitive and even hated losing in a five-a-side!

OFB: Who was in your opinion the manager that had the greatest influence on your career and why?

NM: My youth team manager at the time I was at Southampton was Dave Merrington. He was a Geordie (Nothing wrong with that – OFB) and was as hard as nails but a great coach. We had jobs to do around the club as apprentices. like cleaning the toilets and polishing everywhere. If he found any dust on doors, or on ledges, he would get us all outside near to this little running track. We then had to run around the pitch at the Dell and run and run, until we couldn’t run any more. He did this, so we would learn to do our jobs properly on and off the pitch. He taught us so much regarding being respectful and to just be a good person.

OFB: Which opposing team and which player did you fear playing against?

NM: None although I have nightmares about Marc Overmars.

OFB: Which opposing team and which player did you like playing against?

NM: None, none at all, I just got on with the game

OFB: Who is your favourite Boro player of all time and why?

NM: For me it has got to be Paul Merson, he was the difference when we got promoted, he was the game changer.

OFB: Who is your current favourite Boro player and why?

NM: Johnny Howson at the moment, but that could change as the season progresses!

OFB: How do you think the match day has changed from the time that you played professional football to the present day?

NM: Well the money in football has allowed better players to come to England and play in the top flight. I do see a lot of changes regarding ice baths after games, where I used to jump in a boiling bath and stay there for ages. The Food and Diet has changed also.

OFB: If you could be a fly on the wall, is there any dressing room you would wish to eavesdrop on?

NM: Alex Ferguson at Man United, now that would have been great!

OFB: Do you have any regrets in your career, or missed opportunities?

NM: No, I’ve no regrets, I had a really, really, bad injury that kept me out of the game for 2 years at Southampton. It was a serious knee injury, which if I told you then, you would not believe me, but four operations and 2 years later I finally got back playing and it made me appreciate football even more.

OFB: Whom have you made a lifelong friend through football?

NM: Lots of players, Nicky Banger, Dave Beasant, Le Tissier, Franny, there are so many also that did not make it professionally in the game, but I was in the same youth side as them. All of them I still speak to, to this day.

“Maddo”  joined Radio Tees in the 2013-14 season as a co-commentator and
is pictured casting his eye over Boro’s performance alongside Mark Drury

OFB: You joined Radio Tees as a co-commentator when Craig Hignett left to join Boro were you nervous?

NM: No, because I did do a little bit with the great man himself (Ali) on a Monday, so I felt ok about it.

OFB: I met Ali Brownlee quite a few times and he was such a nice guy, what was he like to work with?

NM: The best! He was so professional in his work and I just could not believe when we scored, the words that came out of his mouth, he was genuinely the best. He made me laugh so many times when we did the commentary. The lads that I work with now on Radio are absolutely, top, top, drawer as well.

OFB: Ali had the reputation of being a devil may care character, can you tell us of some of his amusing escapades.

NM: He just made me laugh, the commentary, the words that came out of his mouth, the loudness, everything about him was amusing

OFB: When Ali left us he was a big miss, to us all, do you still think of him whilst you are commentating or does professionalism take over?

NM: I always think of him, what he would say etc. I confess that I sometimes talk to him whilst I’m walking my dog!

OFB: Malcolm Allison was a co-commentator and summariser, many years ago on Radio Tees and famously used an expletive. How close have you come to being caught out yourself or is there a 3 second delay switch?

NM: I’ve lost count!

OFB: What is the best commentating experience you have had whilst watching the Boro?

NM: The Brighton game when we got promoted, I’m not ashamed to say I had a few tears that day, and for Ali also.

OFB: Did you ever think whilst you were playing that you would end up as a coach and in managerial positions, or did it just evolve naturally?

NM: I’ve only ever known football, I think I’m an OK coach, I just love watching football at any level

OFB: Finally, if you hadn’t had a professional career as a footballer, what do you think you would have done as a career?

NM: OMG I dread to think!

OFB: A huge thank you for taking the time to talk to Diasboro and our readers.

 

Championship 2018-19: Week 5

Tue 28 Aug – 19:45: Boro v Rochdale (EFL Cup)
Fri 31 Aug – 17:00: Transfer Loan Window Closes
Fri 31 Aug – 19:45: Leeds v Boro

Having pushed his players to the top of the mountain in an attempt to gain the potential energy required to achieve peak fitness, Tony Pulis’s team have now shaken off any apparent pre-season legginess in their limbs and are now seemingly on a roll as they start to gather momentum in the embryonic promotion race. As yet no signs of the Boro hardened promotion stone gathering any of that Monk moss that lead to repeated fluffing of lines as the progress up the table was hindered. It seems the sum of the compact squad’s re-invigorated parts have so far added up to something a whole lot greater than many had anticipated following key departures – especially if the supposedly unmovable obstacle waiting in our path in West Yorkshire can also be negotiated ahead of the international break.

With Boro dropping just two points from their first five games, it’s got the statisticians trawling through the records to measure the achievement in the prerequisite ‘best since’ bracket – with the counter currently standing at best since 1994-95, when the club also managed 13 points at this stage. You may recall that season was Bryan Robson’s first in charge as Boro’s player-manager and he opened with four straight wins against Burnley, Southend, Bolton and Derby, before drawing at Watford. A 2-2 draw against Sunderland was then followed by victory over West Brom before the first defeat of the season away at Port Vale, which was the only loss in the opening ten games as Boro sat on 23 points at the first significant milestone. The omens may be good as Boro went up as champions that season – though it was with the relatively low total of just 80 points. That was just one point ahead of Reading in second, who missed out in the play-offs as only one automatic slot was made available when the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams from 22. In the end, despite only losing one of their last ten games, Boro just managed to hang on to top spot after drawing four of the last five games.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, Boro are still facing the age-old problem of how to attract players to the club. Perhaps the main reason Steve Gibson chose the untested former Manchester United and England captain, Bryan Robson, as manager was to add some glamour and pulling power to Teesside. After joining the club, Robbo brought with him Viv Anderson and Clayton Blackmore from Old Trafford – also arriving was cult hero Uwe Fuchs from Germany and then later in March (in those nostalgic pre-transfer window days) came Jan Åge Fjørtoft for £1.3m to score some vital late goals. Of course not all the glamour came from abroad and big clubs like Man Utd, some of it was home grown too and perhaps the epitome of it was in the shape of Jamie Pollock, who emulated Gary Lineker as he went on to play in La Liga on his strict regime of Tudor crisps – albeit in the second tier in Pamplona for a couple of outings before returning to wet and windy Wednesday evenings with the Trotters after failing to take the bull by the horns in Navarre. Nevertheless, Robson’s arrival that season heralded the start of the transformation of Boro from an unglamorous club in a remote corner of England to an unglamorous destination for some of the biggest names in the game.

Unfortunately, the game has moved on and Steve Gibson’s financial clout is nothing more than a clip round the ear in today’s game dominated by billionaires and super-agents. The model developed back then is no longer viable for a small Brexit town in Europe who are now currently looking for value for money and the club have instead reverted to the no-nonsense common-sense approach of veteran manager Tony Pulis. The Boro faithful on Teesside don’t expect to be competing for the signatures of those who play regularly for the big Champions League clubs any time soon. In fact, this transfer window has shown that unless Boro decide to throw money around, they have to wait orderly in the queue until the likes of Villa have finished trying to impress our potential targets with their past glories.

Having said that, the irony is that it’s self-styled ‘big clubs’ trading on former glories signing players who are also trading on the past when they were going to be the next big thing. Yannick Bolasie turned down Boro after declaring “I looked around both Villa Park and the training ground, and me and my family just said, ‘wow’. It’s Premier League everywhere you look.” – though presumably they neglected to look at the fixture list on the wall that said loud and clear that the West Midlands club are still most definitely a Championship outfit and have been for the last three seasons. Incidentally, Stewart Downing is still Villa’s second biggest signing at £12m after moving from Boro back in 2009 – he sits behind Darren Bent who apparently cost somewhere between £18-24m from Sunderland and managed just 20 goals in four seasons before heading off on loan to Fulham, Derby and Brighton. You would suspect that the price of returning to challenge at the top of the pyramid is going to take very serious investment indeed before they can once again be taken serious as a ‘big club’.

At least Tony Pulis finally persuaded Mo Besic that his future in the short term lay on Teesside – though perhaps in the end both parties knew the best financial package on offer would need to include a contribution from the deeper pockets of Everton if the player wasn’t going to have to take a pay cut. Whether his agent did indeed ask for around a couple of million quid at the last minute to seal the deal doesn’t seemed to have affected the move. It may have even been a tactic designed to push it beyond the permanent move deadline – or at worse pocket a huge wad from a club desperate enough to pay.

With still a few days to go in the loan market, we may be about to enter a frenetic stage of transfer activity with some incomings leading to possible outgoings. The fact that loan deals can have buy-on clauses inserted that get triggered in January only makes a nonsense of the system. It will make little difference to the clubs once their accountants have sliced up the spending on the playing assets and spread them over the contract duration or added loan fees. Clubs will buy if they have the opportunity or means to do so, otherwise it will be a matter of making the numbers work for all parties with a loan deal. Joe Hart made the point that older players favour a permanent deal over loans as they are looking to settle in a club rather than move their families around – whereas younger players are looking for a chance to impress and get regular football. However, for the club paying for a player, they would most likely prefer the opposite – buying an older player with limited sell-on value and wanting a bigger contract is an expensive risk but young talent offers the possibility of profits down the line. Both sides will no doubt have to settle for something in the middle.

The Boro manager indicated last week that he owed it to his chairman to try and bring in players at the right age who would be assets for the club. By which he probably means ones in their mid-twenties rather than those looking for their last contract. There are reports that Boro are getting close to persuading Millwall to part with George Saville to add to their increasing row of midfielders. Hopefully he’s the tailor-made box-to-box midfielder that will be well suited to Tony Pullis’s new pressing style of play. Saville has spent 18 months at the Den and scored 10 goals last season – which is something the Boro engine room has lacked in recent seasons. We are also told he can play as a false number ten, which may have a few people who have been waiting for a real number ten wondering what that actually means. Apparently a false number ten lines up behind the striker but moves out wide when receiving the ball to overload the wings with a regular wide player or full-back. There are even discussions of how a false number ten can play with a false number nine but it may require more chalk and arrows than my virtual blackboard can cope with. The main issue at Boro is having teams with false dawns. Incidentally, Saville was also at the Chelsea academy before being sold to Wolves for £1m – with many on the message boards claiming they were “done” by Chelsea at that  modest price.

Tony Pulis’s effective tactical variations have seemingly been foisted upon him by his limited options and recently claimed of the 3-5-2 formation: “It’s a system that we are playing at the moment because we haven’t got the wide players that we would like to have. If we can get a couple of wide players then we can be adaptable.” all of which may make some wonder whether Boro’s better than expected standing in the table was an accident that could have been avoided. Though the switch to a kind of 3-4-3 against West Brom certainly stopped the Baggies scoring spree in its tracks – though that came at the expense of dropping Lewis Wing and playing Downing in a more central playmaker role – actually similar to the one he enjoyed at West Ham. It seems Pulis still wants those wide players and the usual suspects of Sheyi Ojo and Robert Snodgrass are still being linked. Though latest reports suggest Ojo is to trade his number 54 Liverpool shirt for a loan to Belgium – with Snodgrass being challenged by Pellegrini to resurrect his or indeed both of their careers at the rock-bottom West Ham and has turned down a call-up by Scotland to focus on retaining his place at the Hammers.

Perhaps the biggest factor in Boro’s improvement is that the process of de-Karankifaction of the midfield mindset looks to be almost complete as the team now moves forward with purpose rather than reluctance. It appears that purpose is no longer focused on simply retaining possession by playing the ball in areas that the opposition are happy to let Boro boost their pass completion stats in. Thankfully, Boro now play with just one holding midfielder instead of three and even Clayton in that holding role has improved his distribution with Howson suddenly looking like the player he was sold as in a full-energy driving role. It may well be that with this extreme pressing game, Boro will need to have a couple of central midfielders available on the bench to freshen up tiring limbs in the final 20-30 minutes – especially with regular midweek games.

There are also suggestions that Boro still lack a goal scorer who can put away the chances that make automatic promotion a real possibility and it may be an outside chance we get a surprise striker before Friday. It will no doubt mean a couple will be heading for a Riverside exit – with interest in Fletcher and Gestede being muted from former Boro managers at Birmingham and Forest. Also expected to leave are those on the fringes like Marvin Johnson, who is wanted by the Blades and Julian De Sart, who has become less visible than the invisible man on Teesside.

Tuesday sees the second round of the Caraboa Cup, with Rochdale riding into town to take on Boro’s young guns. For many of the youngsters the prospect of being part of the senior squad seems to be slipping away with each signing and one hopes their enthusiasm to impress won’t be diminished as a result. Perhaps we’ll see a young defence again but with the likes of Leadbitter, McNair and Besic needing some pitch time it could be an experienced midfield. Up front Gestede, Hugill and Fletcher may also get an outing with Tavernier and Wing offering the pace.

Much will depend on Pulis’s plans for the main event on Friday as Boro will be looking to go into the International break in good spirits. Avoiding defeat against Leeds in the first 32Red derby of the season is probably the preference for most Boro followers. The prospect of having to wait two weeks to get it out of our system will perhaps leave many by day 11 predicting relegation as the likely impact of this setback. Of course win and we won’t want the break to end as staring at the top of the table becomes the pass-time of choice on Teesside – with some possibly opting for cutting out as many newspaper copies as they can find to fill in the hours of the international snooze-fest. At least the worst-case scenario is that only Bolton can equal our points total providing they win at Preston. In addition, with only four clubs on nine points, two of whom play each other in Sheffield United and Villa, plus Derby and Blackburn play away too – then three points on Friday holds the intriguing prospect of opening up a five point gap on third spot for the winners.

We know Tony Pulis has confessed to preferring not to lose over winning, so it’s possible he’ll employ similar tactics to those on show against West Brom last Friday. Although, he has tended towards a back four when playing away from home and has gone for the extra midfielder instead. Leeds are the Championship’s top scorers and perhaps that will drive his thinking on tactics – though Boro have the meanest defence and have not conceded for over 400 minutes. It will be the biggest test so far but we shouldn’t overlook that if either Sheffield United, Bristol City or West Brom had beaten us then they would be sitting one place above us in second spot. It should be a good encounter between the Championship form sides and perhaps not for the faint-hearted. Let’s hope the cracks don’t appear on Boro’s free-wheeling promotion stone as it continues to keep on rolling!

The latest in a series of profiles and interviews, Orginal Fat Bob gives his personal view on the life and career of a footballing guest, before sitting down for a chat and asking a few questions. Our Diasboro special guest this week is David ‘Hodgy’ Hodgson.

1. The Overview – the man and his career

David, James, Hodgson, known to the Boro fans as “Hodgy”, was born on the 6th August 1960 in Gateshead. He played in the Junior MFC team with his best pal Mark Proctor and is another of the lads that I used to referee for Harold Shepherson, better known to all, simply as; “Shep”.

“Shep” acted as the England trainer under Sir Alf Ramsey and was also Jack Charlton’s Assistant Manager, responsible for bringing through all the young lads and apprentices into the first team. “Hodgy” scored a lot of goals in that Boro junior forward line which also included Stan Cummins and Craig Johnson.

David Hodgson came through the ranks as a Boro junior and made his first-team debut in 1978 and quickly became a crowd favourite with his pace

‘Hodgy’ and I, after being in contact for a few weeks, had arranged to meet in a little café/restaurant in Yarm on Tees, at the rear of a trendy designer clothes boutique. It’s a place that is not unfamiliar to footballers and their wives, from the current Boro first team and an ideal place to talk, prior to it getting busy for lunchtime. When he strode into the rear of the coffee shop it was like meeting an old friend, as he hasn’t changed much over the years. I hadn’t realized how tall he was, and he still looks athletic and very fit. He told me still works out and goes cycling for miles with another ex-Boro player, Steve Vickers.

We reminisced about all the great players that had emerged from that young Boro junior side that he had played with and that I had refereed at the time, Mark Proctor, Craig Johnson, himself, Graeme Hedley. We paused for a moment and I said to him,

“Do you know who I thought was going to be the best of that bunch of players and really make it to the big time?” He looked at me and without hesitation, we both said it together and laughed, sharing the knowledge. “Little Stan!”

Stan Cummins was one of the most skillful footballers we had both seen as a junior and Jack Charlton once famously said that Stan was going to be the first £1 million-pound footballer. He wasn’t of course, as that accolade went to Trevor Francis. Some people felt that after Jack had made that comment it was like a millstone around Stan’s neck.

We also agreed that Craig Johnson was also the player who was the hardest working apprentice. At that time, he played up front, alongside Hodgy, who was always shouting out “Roo pass, pass.” (CJ was known as Roo, short for Kangaroo, due to his Australian Heritage! OFB)

We talked about players that we both knew and where they were now. He mentioned that Kelham O’Hanlon our former goalkeeper, is now running a soccer academy in Atlanta Georgia USA and I told Hodgy that Kelham’s father used to be my form master at school and had taught me to swim. It’s a small world in planet Boro. Hodgy and I, when we were talking, found out that we also lived near each other when in Southern Spain, he was playing for Seville and I was working in Cadiz. We were also nearby, when we were both working in Argentina in Buenos Aires, he still in football and myself in the Oil Industry.

David Hodgson left Boro to join Liverpool in 1982, though he said the move was his biggest regret as he was happy playing with his mates at the Boro

Hodgy played for Middlesbrough’s first team from 1978 to 1982, making 125 appearances, scoring 16 goals. His other clubs included, Liverpool from 1982 to 1984 where he made 28 appearances and scored 4 goals. During our discussions, he told me that after leaving Middlesbrough, which was his biggest regret, that another one of his greatest regrets during his playing career, was leaving Liverpool to go to Sunderland. He told me with a grin that when he was just about to leave Liverpool Joe Fagan had said to him at that time, “Go and talk to them, but don’t sign yet, come back and talk to me first.”

Hodgy ruefully smirked at me and said he didn’t do that, he just signed on the dotted line for Sunderland. He went back to Liverpool to collect his kit and belongings and Fagan called him over and angrily said to him. “Son, you’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.” Bemused by this, Hodgy walked away, then later found out that Joe Fagan was planning to play him in the right sided midfield position, to replace the aging Sammy Lee. So, it was a missed opportunity for him to stay and be successful with a world class team.

He also played for Norwich City, Sunderland and Sheffield Wednesday. His overseas career also encompassed clubs and teams in France, Japan, and Spain.

His list of achievements and trophies whilst playing for Liverpool F.C include; FA Charity Shield winner: 1982, First Division Title winner: 1982–83,1984. FA Charity Shield runner-up: 1983, 1984 and of course most notable as European Cup winners during the season 1983–84

His closest to getting a trophy at Sunderland, was when they were the Milk Cup runners-up in1984–85.

He played for England U-21s and was a member of the team that won the UEFA Under-21 Football Championship in 1982.

He was also manager of Darlington and achieved a runner up award in the Division Three final during the season 1999-2000.

He was Director of Sport at bhpsport a division of Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP after he left his post as Darlington manager in October 2006, where he was in his third spell in charge of the team. In 2004, he wrote a book titled Three Times A Quaker: My World of Football and Passion for Darlington F.C. (published by Speakeasy Publishing).

2. The Interview – a (not so quick) quick chat

OFB: What year did you join Boro as a professional footballer?

DH: I joined in 1976 as an apprentice professional.

OFB: Where did you stay? Did you rent, or did you live in digs?

DH: I stayed in the Meadhurst Hotel at Linthorpe, which was owned by the Boro, but was nearly kicked out of the club at seventeen when I trashed the room! My mum had died a sudden death at the age of 42 and I was devastated, but I didn’t grieve. Proc (Mark Proctor OFB), though everyone calls him Charlie, saw the change in my character. He arrived at the hotel one night and told me to pack my bags. He said that Micky, his mum had heard what had happened and said, “Get a bed ready in your room he’s coming to live with us.” So, he did, and I stayed there for years, even when Proc had moved out to go to Nottingham Forest. She mollycoddled me and Proc was my alarm clock, making me get up in the morning for training.

OFB: Who were your favourite Boro and Liverpool players and others that you have played with?

DH: Graeme Souness was a great player for both Middlesbrough and Liverpool. I also loved playing with Craig Johnson at Boro and then at Liverpool. Craig was nearly sold to Stoke when he was at Liverpool but overcame all his doubters through sheer hard work and became a star player. Technically the most gifted player I played with was Kenny (Now Sir Kenny! OFB) Dalgleish. He was a genius and a great guy. He once trained with me at Darlington and played in a charity game, as I say a great guy.

OFB: Who were the best and worst trainers in the team?

DH: We all had to train hard and the years between 16 and 18 were the hardest. You had to grow up at 18 and those two years meant if you didn’t work hard, you weren’t kept on at the club and you would be out of the game. At Boro and Liverpool the hardest worker was Craig Johnson he outshone everybody.

The worst trainer I shared a training session with was; Ian Rush. He hardly moved and was so poor in training that he often in winter had to be helped off the pitch, because he was so cold and hadn’t run around. Yet come match day, he was dynamite!

OFB: Who did you room with for away matches?

DH: At the Boro it was always Proc. At Liverpool it varied between; Michael Robinson, Paul Walsh and Kenny Dalgleish. For a short time, Craig Johnson roomed with me as well.

OFB: Who was the joker in the team?

DH: I’m afraid it was me!

OFB: Can you tell us any amusing anecdotes or pranks that were played?

DH: When I was at Liverpool, we went on a tour of South America and it was very hot. After one game we went back to the hotel and I was at the bar and we had to sit with a lady who was one of the organizers. I ended up pouring a bucket of ice over her and she was soaked. The lads thought it was hilarious and were grateful that we would never have to play there again as we weren’t invited back!

Another time before the 1984 world cup, we travelled to Israel to strengthen team spirit. We started playing “fizzbuzz” one night which is a drinking game. There was myself, Alan Hanson, Kenny, Bruce, Steve Nick and Ian Rush all drinking and then a fight started. Me and Rushie were good mates and it was backs to the wall. It calmed down after a while and Rushie and I went back to the hotel with Alan Kennedy, who then lay on the floor and couldn’t get up. I went to pick him up and also fell down on the floor, just as Mr Moss an old-school Liverpool Director was walking past.

“Gentlemen this is Liverpool Football Club” he frowned. I pulled myself upright by grabbing his trousers and replied close to his face. “Mossy you old bugger, you might be a Director, but I think you’re a great fella.” The next day after breakfast we were called upstairs and there was Bob Paisley and all the staff and Mr Moss waiting for us all.

Mr Moss stood up and said. “Gentlemen, I’ve been with this club for over 20 years and never witnessed anything like I saw last night. I’ve received many accolades but non-so touching as that given by David Hodgson.” Then all the coaching staff lifted the table cloth off the table to reveal- that it was piled high with beer! Bob Paisley turned to me and winked before saying: “You’re a good Geordie son, that’s what you are.”

OFB: Whose boots did you clean as an apprentice and who cleaned yours?

DH: I used to clean various boots; Jim Platt, David Armstrong, Colin Cooper.

OFB: Did you try and emulate your style of play, on any individual player who played in your position?

DH: I started out at Redheugh Boys Club who played in the Gateshead Youth League and just wanted to score goals. I moved to Boro Boys then the Juniors and still think how I nearly blew it! I never tried to be like any other player, but Bobby Murdoch was a great coach and he showed me how to turn like Kenny Dalgleish.

OFB: What was your most memorable game, your own individual performance and best experience with the fans?

DH: Boro away to Swansea in the cup in January 1981. We won 5 0 and I scored 2, we were brilliant that day. I remember I was only 19 years old and the players were saying “Just give Hodgy the Ball.”

OFB: What was your worst game or experience and why?

DH: When I played for Liverpool and we were away to Burnley. I had too many issues and my head was all over the place and I was dreadful.

OFB: Is there a game that you wished you had played in, either for Boro or another team?

DH: The European cup Final when I was at Liverpool and sat on the bench and just watched.

OFB: Who was in your opinion the best manager that Boro have ever had and why?

DH: I like Tony Pulis, he’s a throwback to the old school manager, very thorough, a straight talker and regimental. Look how he changed the way Traore plays football, to make something out of his game and give an end product. John Neal was one of the Boro’s most underrated managers. He drilled into me forty or fifty times a training session, where I needed to be and how to hit the byline and find somebody in the box. I also though Aitor Karanka would have kept Boro in the Premiership. The only game I thought was the most difficult during that season when they were outplayed, was when they played at home against Liverpool.

Jack Charlton has to be the best manager we have ever had, although I did like John Neal. I went to John’s Funeral and Proc drove me as I was ill and had a bad throat at the time. Tony McAndrew was there, and we went to support Beverly, John’s wife.

OFB: Who was in your opinion the manager that had the greatest influence on your career and why?

DH: John Neal, Bob Paisley and a special mention to Bobby Murdoch who helped me so much.

OFB: Who didn’t you like as your manager?

DH: I fell out with Joe Fagan at Liverpool and absolutely hated Lawrie McMenemy at Sunderland, I didn’t like him at all. I should have been more selfish and believed in myself as a player and stood up to them.

Yet things weren’t really all that bad at Liverpool, because after I left them for Sunderland, Roy Evans sent me a glass trophy decanter for winning the treble and they had it engraved with the message;

“Good luck you old buzzer!”

OFB: Which opposing team and which player did you fear playing against?

DH: I didn’t fear anyone. I remember playing at home against Leeds and Brian Greenhaugh kicked me and I fell on my knee. I got him back though the next time we played them, two weeks later and smacked him in the ribs. I also flattened Norman Hunter once, he was surprised!

I also hated playing against Portsmouth, in particular the big centre back Steve Foster. He was all arms and legs and it was tough playing against him. He wasn’t particularly quick, but he was a real pain in the arse!

OFB: Which opposing team and which player did you like playing against?

DH: Let me say first, that when you played at home you had to play well, or you would get it in the neck from the chicken run. (Ayresome Park South Stand – I was a member OFB). So, you had to make your mark to get the praise because these guys knew their football.

I always loved playing against Spurs. When I was at Boro, I scored a hat-trick against them. I also scored against them whilst playing for Liverpool and Sunderland. I just enjoyed playing them and nobody was quicker on that pitch than me.

OFB: Who is your favourite Boro player of all time and why?

DH: Graeme Souness, he had it all. Skill, Determination, Steel, Grit and above all leadership.

OFB: Who is your current favourite Boro player and why?

DH: I like Adam Clayton, he is a steady player and very consistent. I also think Ben Gibson is great, but I do wonder that if he has to progress to the next level, whether he needs to move to another club. I would hate that if he did by the way!

OFB: Do you think Boro will get promoted?

DH: Definitely! Yes! I would put a bet on it. I would put them up against anybody in the playoffs with Tony Pulis in charge with his own team.

OFB: How do you think the match day has changed from the time that you played professional football to the present day?

DH: I don’t think it’s faster or the players are quicker, but I do think its slicker these days. The positioning of all the TV cameras, means you can see all the action and how certain players perform, so it’s better for the fans.

OFB: If you could be a fly on the wall, is there any dressing room you would wish to eavesdrop on?

DH: Over the years I have seen how Howard Wilkinson and Graeme Souness who were strict disciplinarians and knew how they wanted football to be played. I had three spells as manager of Darlington between 1995 to 2006 and I could have done better, although we did get to the Division 3 play-off final in 2003.

I also wish I could have seen how the late great Sir Bobby Robson set up his team talks. Today, I would love to hear how Mourinho goes about his pre and half-time team talks.

David Hodgson had three spells as Darlington manager between 1995 and 2003, including once resigning at half-time before being re-instated at full-time

 

OFB: Do you have any regrets in your career, or missed opportunities?

DH: When I was the manager at Darlington we were playing Rochdale in the cup and I resigned at half time when things weren’t going so well. Fortunately, I saw sense and was reinstated at full time. When I left Darlington the first time I ran BHP Sports Division and went to South America and was based in Argentina. I followed the career of every under 15 male footballers in all South America. I spotted a young guy called Kenedy who went to Chelsea and was on loan at Newcastle last season. I would have stayed in South America because I loved the life style and only left because my girls had to get good schooling.

My biggest regret was that I listened to one of the Boro Directors telling me I had to leave the club to go to Liverpool because Boro needed the money. I just wanted to be happy and I was happy there at the Boro with my mates and the fans who loved me.

OFB: Do you still follow the Boro and their results

DH: Of course, I do. Why do you think I agreed to this Interview? I love everything about the club!

OFB: Whereabouts in the Country do you live these days and what do you do?

DH: I live in Denton just outside Newcastle Upon Tyne and my friend and near neighbour is Michael Dods, a leading Racehorse Trainer. (Hodgie gave me a strong tip and I put a bet on it – It came nowhere! OFB). I’ve set my two daughters who are aged in their twenties up in business. I also work as a football consultant, so I’m still involved with football.

OFB: Whom have you made a lifelong friend through football?

DH: I’ve made many: Proc, Steve Vickers who I go cycling with, Bryan Gunn the ex-Norwich City goalkeeper and Kelham O’Hanlon. There are lots more. Football, its that kind of a game, where you make so many friends. I’ve worked with Gary Gill, Gary Bennett and Colin Todd at BHP and we still keep in touch.

OFB: Finally, if you hadn’t had a professional career as a footballer, what do you think you would have as a career?

DH: Probably what I’m doing now. I use Wyscout, which is a software programme for football videos, data, statistics and tools. I analyze teams, matches and players; discover new talents. I can watch every game in the world and allocate players to leagues and see if I can interest clubs in players, or managers to clubs.

I remember a few years ago, I was at a meeting with Birmingham and Karen Brady who was the Chief Executive was there with David Sullivan the owner. They were looking for a new manager and were going to replace Trevor Francis. We were all sat in the Board Room, I suggested the name of a young guy who I thought was right for the English scene after working abroad for many years. They had never heard of him and asked for a reference from an English Manager if possible. I rang Sir Bobby Robson, explained that I needed a reference for this guy and handed the phone over to David Sullivan.

After five minutes talking, David said goodbye and turned to me. “Bobby doesn’t think he’s experienced enough.” “I don’t agree” I replied – “I think this guy, Jose Mourinho is going to be a big name!”

I now work with Base Soccer in London, which is a highly reputed agency for professional footballers. They are providing a service that is dedicated to the ongoing development and management of its clients’ careers in football and beyond. I travel two weeks in every month and go to Japan and Africa and all over the world. I really enjoy it.

OFB: A huge thank you David, for taking the time to talk to Diasboro and our readers it was a real pleasure meeting you.

Championship 2018-19: Week 4

Fri 24 Aug – 19:45: Boro v West Brom

As Boro hope to add to their portfolio of newly acquired live performing artwork, it appears few of our recent signings have left some available real estate on their body canvas for the Middlesbrough crest – although it may still not be a deal breaker if some insist that there may be issues around fitting that particular school of design into their eclectic tastes. As we speak, rumours that Yannick Bolasie is at Rockliffe having a cubist version of Tony Pulis’s face immortalised on his back may appear a little premature. Still it’s possible the club have missed a trick by not employing a resident team of tattoo artists as a unique selling point – who are on call should any player be in immediate need of expressing themselves with a permanent abstract doodle or profound piece of text that embodies their soul.

Tony Pulis said this week that he is confident his leading targets want to move to the Riverside and gave a rare inside view of this certainty: “Without going into too much detail, I think the players know about our interest, and from everything that’s been said or not been said, I think the players would like to come”. Is this the breakthrough the Boro manager has been waiting for? Has he taken off his cap and looked the player in the eyes and made a positive connection? Well it appears not, as he quickly added “That’s not me having spoken to them, but it’s other people telling me stuff.” Interesting yet somewhat vague for the Boro faithful eagerly awaiting news – though he did say he didn’t want to go into too much detail and “other people telling me stuff” does certainly fall into that category.

Whether that ‘other person’ means Neil Bausor and he’s given feedback on his cold-calling opening gambit of “Hi, I’m calling on behalf of a colleague of mine, let’s call him Anthony, who wants to know if someone asked you to go and play for the team at the top of the league would you rule it out?” – which may well have brought the response “No probably not, especially if the money was right – but I’d have to see what my agent thinks first”. The Boro Chief Executive proudly places another tick in the ‘keen to come to the club’ box and passes on this snippet of ‘stuff’ back to an impatient Tony.

Though Pulis is pretty down to earth and understands some people may have reservations about heading all the way up north further than even the M1 dares to venture. He would no doubt expect that his recruitment team had tested the water on any geographical misgivings though. The Boro manager, who’s currently still holed up alone in a suite at Rockliffe Hall as his wife apparently prefers the comforts of their Bournemouth home, told the press conference this week that “I’ve not had anybody being disrespectful or saying they don’t want to join Middlesbrough or move up to the North-East. The response I’ve had from other clubs, and if we are given the opportunity to speak to players, is that people are very keen to come up here if a deal could be sorted out.”

Incidentally, his wife Debs has visited him in the north-east a couple of times – he once recalled a day out with her at Whitby: “The wind was blowing, her poor face, with a bobble hat on, was red raw when we got off the beach. I told her she had caught the sun but I think it was the cold weather!” Apparently love is never having to say “I’m heading back to the south coast before I need a bloody face lift and a skin graft!”

As to whether some targets have been dissing the area is hard to say – perhaps again Neil Bausor has also ticked the ‘wants to come to Teesside’ box during his brief informal sounding out calls to friends of the player: “How do think he’d feel about joining a club north of London? Would that be an issue?” The response of “Well bro it all depends what you call north” was usually met cagily with “I think you’d find Middlesbrough is named thus because it’s in the middle.” – though without adding the UK and not England. No doubt the caveat of “His agent says the price goes up the further north he has to travel so if you want the deal it’s gonna cost you” didn’t make it into the report in exactly those words but “very keen if a deal can be sorted” was written instead.

As Boro sit at the the top of the table after three successive league victories, Pulis has slightly adjusted his desperate plea for reinforcements after earlier claiming he’s “six players down” and “the squad is not good enough to get promoted”. He’s now using Boro’s unexpected lofty position to shed doubt on whether they can remain as pace setters: “We’ve got expectations to be at the top of the table and to be at the top of the table you can’t afford to lose the players we’ve lost and not replace them.” Clearly his stay on Teesside has allowed him to fully absorb the pessimism wafting through the air and he’s already seemingly become imbued with the general feeling that disaster is just around the corner – should any self respecting Teesider imagine surviving long enough to make it to the end of the road to turn the corner. “The quality in the group has to be improved and the depth has to be improved otherwise I’m absolutely convinced we’ll just fall away.” said the glass-half-empty Boro manager from his Rockliffe window ledge.

Though the Boro manager has said he’s not alone in calling for reinforcements and there appears to be a cacophony of noise emanating from the gathering protesters in the Boro dressing room according to the gaffer. As the disgruntled squad marches past the chairman’s office carrying their placards, Steve Gibson will be no doubt disturbed by the chants of: “What do we want? Players! When do we want them? Now… or preferably before the 31 August”. Tony Pulis declared: “It’s not me shouting and saying, ‘We need players in’ – the players in the dressing room know that we need players in as well. They are not stupid, they understand the situation, they understand what this level’s like and what it needs and what it takes so they are waiting as well for players to come in. It’s not me moaning as a manager, it’s the group.”

Pulis must be tired of hearing Lewis Wing moaning as the team-sheet gets pinned up and he’s disappointedly told that he going to have to play again because Mo Besic still hasn’t persuaded his agent to settle for something below lottery-winning proportions. Even Stewart Downing must have contemplated throwing the odd chair after being told he must continue to play on the right as the Toffees are still chewing over the idea of loaning out the unwanted Bolasie on reduced wages. Adam Clayton is so annoyed that reinforcements haven’t arrived that he’s working to rule and has refused to take one for the team until he’s convinced that his personal target of 15 yellow cards can be successfully managed by the club. As September arrives, many of the players start to anticipate the arrival of the Teesside winter and know that several of the squad will soon start seeking a warm hole in close proximity to the Rockliffe treatment room to hibernate in. Historically, Boro’s central midfielders are most prone to becoming sluggish as the evenings shorten and they begin entering a state of torpor, though sometimes it’s difficult to notice the change in behaviour until they get caught napping on the pitch.

Talking of hibernating and waking up to find nothing new has sprung, many of the Boro faithful may be getting a sense of Groundhog Day with rumours that Robert Snodgrass is once again being target by the club. Who said that the Boro recruitment doesn’t get their man! It’s just a matter of waiting sometimes. Blowing the dust off the dossiers of former targets may be where we’re at just now as there is little movement in the market. At least the Scottish winger shouldn’t have problems heading so far north after stints at Hull and Leeds, though he’ll be 31 in a few weeks but still scored 7 goals and made 14 assists last season on loan with Villa, who are also interested in having him back. Hopefully, West Ham have Boro on speed-dial given their lucrative recent business with the Teessiders – with Downing, Randolph, Fletcher and Hugill all netting the Hammers some decent returns.

Though why wait for old targets to see the error of their ways and change their minds on not choosing Teesside – there are far more recently linked players possibly regretting deciding not pulling on a Boro shirt. When Patrick Bamford joined Leeds, he said in his unveiling interview after being handed the number nine shirt that he was pleased to finally be the main man at a club – “I’ve been wanting to be the main man somewhere for a long time and Leeds have offered me that opportunity so it really is something I grabbed with both hands”. Well he seems to have discovered that being the ‘main man’ in West Yorkshire may have been lost in translation as he once again started on the bench, only coming on in the time-wasting 87th minute slot – just like when he was not quite the main man under Garry Monk at Boro. He was perhaps already beginning to suspect something was not quite right when he was selected to play in the Caraboa Cup in midweek, while all the other apparent less important subordinate strikers were being rested for the game at the weekend. He may soon come to the realisation that only Boro have given him anything like the pitch time he desired – all he’s had elsewhere is a promising future before taking up his usual seat on the bench.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Tony Pulis has already indicated that he is indeed desperate for new players. We can only imagine some of the left-field thinking possibly emerging from the recruitment team in a bid to help with the apparent difficulty in persuading players to come to Boro. You may recall how Fulham manager, Slaviša Jokanović, thwarted Boro’s planned loan deal of Mitrovic from Newcastle last January after he sent a Snapchat message to the player. Well maybe it’s time to browse through those carefully prepared dossiers for little snippets of personal information and unleash Tony Pulis on Instagram with a carefully targeted video message to swing the deal.

Whether the Boro manager has been pitched with such ideas is not known, though I suspect it’s only a matter of time before it will be tried. “OK Tony we understand Besic’s agent is a big fan of Debbie Harry so we thought if you could maybe sing a bit of ‘Call Me’ and then make the telephone hand gesture it could hopefully break the ice.” This would no doubt be met rather sceptically by Pulis with a reluctant: “Look, I’ll be honest, it’s not really what I’m about but if you think it’s going to help revive the deal then I’ll give it a go… but is this blonde wig really necessary?” With the message sent Boro are momentarily back in the game until the reply of “who is this transvestite you insult me with?” gets posted shortly after. Closer inspection of the dossier revealed it was actually Dirty Harry and not Debbie – but before the recruitment team could run the ‘Do I feel lucky’ idea past Tony, he rather exasperatedly left muttering something about them not being able to organise a certain event in a brewery.

Anyway, no midweek match for Boro and therefore a chance to catch breath before Friday’s TV encounter with West Brom. That will give most of the other teams in the Championship a chance to play catch-up this week, though the only team capable of bettering Boro’s points total is a Leeds side that have won their opening three games and knocked in ten goals. Perhaps it’s a little premature for the Teessiders to start looking over their shoulder but Argentinian manager, Marcelo Bielsa, takes his dangerous looking team to newly relegated Swansea in search of a fourth successive victory. Among this loveless triangle of Garry Monk’s former employers are half of the early season’s unbeaten clubs – two more of them, Villa and Brentford, go head-to-head on Wednesday and the other team yet to taste defeat is Bolton, who host Monk’s latest squeeze Birmingham.

Tony Pulis will be welcoming the club that sacked him last season after they cast doubt on his ability to continue his record of not getting relegated as a manager. He’ll perhaps try to resist that ‘I told you so’ moment after his replacement Alan Pardew won only one of his 18 games, before he himself was ejected in favour of caretaker Darren Moore, who has now been given the job on permanent basis. No doubt Pulis will be keen to make his point by collecting all three on offer but after a slow start the Baggies have bounced back and are now starting to boing. West Brom hit a magnificent (as Schteve might say) seven past the hapless Hoops at the weekend and will be in buoyant mood. Whether the QPR result flattered to deceive is not something that should be taken for granted but 11 goals in the last two games (nine of which arrived in the second half) should focus the Boro defenders minds.

Pulis declared Flint and Fry are a great centre-back pairing after the Bristol game and claimed that the big defender bought from the Robins for £7m is probably now worth £4-5m more in the current market. In fact central defence is one area he’s not looking to recruit in, even though he has so far favoured a back three at home. Indeed, with still five strikers on the books in Britt, Braithwaite, Gestede, Hugill and Fletcher, it looks like that he’ll mainly intend to beef up the pace down the flanks with a collection of full-backs, wing-backs and wingers – plus the odd progressive central midfielder with decent tattoos.

So will it be deal or no deal this week as the Boro manager starts whittling down some of the recruitment team’s ticked boxes containing potential loan targets? Much will depend if the banker upstairs running the club calls and makes an decent offer that is eventually accepted. Tony Pulis will not be a happy contestant if he doesn’t land the big prize he’s been hoping for this transfer window. Nevertheless, I suspect it will probably take more than a consoling arm around the shoulder from Noel Edmonds if all he takes home is a penny – even if it is for his thoughts on how good he thinks the whole recruitment process went.

Middlesbrough		Notts County
Fletcher Mahmutovic	27′, 74′ 44′	Crawford Stead	20′ 34′, 63′
Possession Shots On target Corners Fouls	50% 16 6 6 12	Possession Shots On target Corners Fouls	62% 6 3 2 6

Four for the Boys penalise Magpies

A game that could be the start of a wonderful romantic Cup run to Wembley or a pointless get it out of the way fixture that seriously put at risk a Middlesbrough squad that’s already numerically challenged. Whatever your point of view, tonight saw the visit of one of the Leagues oldest Football Clubs to the Riverside to compete in a match that in all likelihood neither Manager regarded as a “must win”. In the case of Tony Pulis however I’m sure it was secretly regarded as a preferably “not lose” game by the same token. The Magpies from the Trent do have form at the Riverside but I doubt there are many on Teesside who still harbour a revenge psyche from 2006 when they beat a Premiership Boro side 1-0. The most memorable event from a Boro perspective on that September evening was a debut from Robert Huth in the defeat.

Magpies Midfielder Andy Kellet was already announced as a definite starter 24 hours before Kick-off in a bold proclamation by Kevin Nolan who will also have had his eye on their forthcoming Friday night fixture against Yeovil who faced Villa tonight. Both sides were expected to rest the bulk of their starting eleven from recent games but with TP you equally knew that he could do what Bernie Slaven wanted and start with his best eleven, go three up, bring on Subs and as a Birmingham Journalist described Boro’s Saturday victory then go into “Sleeper Mode” to conserve and protect, seeing the game out.

The sides as expected were unrecognisable from the league campaigns to date and in Boro’s case ten changes made from Saturday with the welcome news that Dani Ayala was starting alongside the only survivor from the Brum game Dael Fry. As well as the fringe players and this seasons usual bench warmers Nathan McGinley and Enes Mahmutovic got a breakthrough start along with the younger of our two Veteran Goalkeepers; Andy Lonergen. As expected Grant was captaining this motley crew. No sight of Dimi surprisingly as Randolph was on the bench along with De Sart and Wood who if he made an appearance would become Boro’s youngest ever Player, that record currently resides with a certain Thomas Murray I believe from way back in 1905.

County’s game preparations didn’t exactly go to plan with their Keeper Pindroch who was one of eight changes made by Nolan injured himself during the warm up meaning that regular Goalie Fitzsimons had to take his place between the sticks. A slightly chillier Riverside than of late hosted a very sparse evening crowd of around 9,500 with the South Stand drummer echoing more than usual. County started steadily and looked composed without overstretching themselves whilst Boro themselves seemingly content to attempt to just build up some familiarity between themselves.

The first bit of real activity saw Harry Chapman crossing to Marvin Johnson whose header missed the intended target and then the injury prone wide man found himself upended, crashing to the ground painfully on his shoulder and earning a Yellow card for County Captain Duffy. Neither side were really controlling things but considering they both probably had a team list tucked in their socks to identify team mates it was hardly surprising. Most of Boro’s attacking intent was coming down the right with Mahmutovic overlapping Chapman.

First corner of the game came as a result of a rare Boro foray down the left with a move involving Johnson and Tavernier with Tav’s attempt tipped over for a corner. An immediate second corner saw Mahmutovic have a shot at Fitzsimons which was blocked. A County corner at the other end had to be retaken but whatever the tactic was it failed miserably as County’s players seem to bunch up England style but without the finesse. The set piece didn’t work on that occasion but it only took a few minutes later for another County set piece via a free kick to come in and Tom Crawford found himself free to direct the ball unmarked past Andy Lonergen to put the visitors one up on twenty minutes.

Boro had the wakeup call that they clearly needed as TP looked rather unimpressed on the touchline. Regrouped and refocussed Boro needed to up the stakes and a Johnson shot went out for a corner from which an Ayala goal bound effort was adjudged to have been handball. If at first you don’t succeed so the next Boro Corner saw Ayala again but this time flick the ball on to Ashley Fletcher who pulled the sides level with a tap in 1-1. Despite the goal TP was clearly unhappy with what was happening on the left side of the pitch with very articulate instructions for Johnson and McGinley.

Mahmutovic was linking up well with Chapman and the big lad was making his presence known and causing County plenty of problems. Just as Boro looked to have started to settle into the game County veteran Jon Stead swivelled and hit a low ball at Lonergen from the edge of the box which saw the Boro keeper creaking to the ground to no avail as the visitors went two one up in the 34th minute. An immediate response by Chapman nearly saw a quick equalising opportunity open up for Johnson who hit a volley which ended up awkwardly for Fletcher who couldn’t take advantage.

Chapman went down again clutching the same shoulder indicating that his game was up, a great shame for Harry who seems to be cursed with bad luck. Stephen Walker came on in place of the hapless winger to stake a claim up front with Fletcher with just a few minutes of the half remaining. In Harry’s absence his former right sided partner Mahmutovic who was now seemingly operating in a Ryan Shotton type role, drove into the box to meet a Johnson cross to pull the sides back level again 2-2.

County were certainly not in awe of the two league difference in the sides and Ashley Fletcher rescued Boro blushes by conceding a corner from another County set piece as the first half ran down. The Ref’s whistle went to bring a conclusion to the first 45 minutes in what looked more like a frantic, hectic and ragged pre-season friendly rather than a Cup Tie. High point for me was Enes Mahmutovic who looked like he wanted to make an impression on Pulis.

The second half kicked off with the remaining daylight diminishing and the floodlights to the fore except that the Ref seemed to have a problem with either an earpiece or a whistle as the kick off was momentarily delayed. Grant indicated the general tone of the half time team talk with a succession of challenges that saw a familiar yellow card for the Boro Captain. Walker and Tavernier were the main threats for Boro in the opening stages as both sides continued as they ended the first half.

Nolan was first to blink as he took his carded Captain Duffy off for Brisley either through a knock or more likely with an eye on Friday night. The game entered a stodgy phase with neither side seriously looking to get a stranglehold in the game and as much as some of Boro’s move’s looked classy there was nothing to show for it. With sixty minutes gone TP was warming up his Subs with the intention either to motivate or to make changes. After seeing Johnson miss another half chance TP used the gap in play to make Boro history as 16 years and 75 days old Wood came on to replace Dani Ayala. Just a few minutes into Woods arrival he headed clear but the follow up from Jon Stead lead to another goal for the blue shirted visitors to make it 3-2 with claims for offside from the red faced red shirts.

Dael Fry then went off seemingly and worryingly carrying a knock for ex Fulham lad Djed Spence to come on for Boro and take a place on the right side of defence with Mahmutovic now moving to CB. Nolan also made a change of his own with Husin coming off for Patching. Walker was lively since his introduction and along with McNair added some hope for Boro. A low ball came in towards Walker but he just missed to connect with it much to the angst of the home fans. Boro were starting to apply some pressure now and with just over fifteen minutes remaining McNair and Walker were still upping the tempo and a cleared ball out from the back by Wood eventually arrived at Walker who with a clever drag over sent the County defender the wrong way and set Ashley Fletcher up to hit the back of the net 3-3.

A planned substitution by Nolan was temporarily delayed in the immediate aftermath of the goal much to the annoyance of Pulis who wanted the game to get started again quickly sensing his side were in the ascendency. With his confidence levels high a twenty yard shot from Fletcher had Fitzsimons scurrying and then the ball immediately went down the opposite end only for Mahmutovic to get a well-timed challenge in as the game hung in the balance.

A well worked series of play between McGinley, Johnson, Tavernier and Walker set up McNair whose shot went out for a corner. Grant whipped the corner ball in which went immediately out for another corner which saw Johnson crash in a shot which hit the bar. Walker and Tavernier again applied pressure and won another corner for their endeavours with McGinley just missing the resultant Grants ball in. With the clock ticking down and now less than five minutes remaining penalties were now looking the likely finish to the evening despite a long range Johnson effort which was well covered by Ross Fitzsimons in the County goal.

Another desperate McNair effort flew across the six yard box after Spence and Walker had set the Northern Irishman up. Bizarrely six minutes were flashed up on the fourth official’s board presumably because of all the substitutions rather than the game being stopped. A late corner cleverly won by Stead off Wood saw a volley bravely blocked by McGinley. Another County corner came in from the left by Jones which found Brisley but his header was poor and went out for a Goal Kick. Ex Poolie Lewis Alessandra then had a half opportunity in the dying moments when Boro broke again with McNair and Spence but the final whistle sounded meaning penalties were looming.

Penalties

County were first up with Andy Lonergen playing mind games and pointing to Stead’s preferred side and rolling back the years he saved from ex Makem Jon Stead. Grant next to coolly fire the ball past Fitzsimons to put Boro 1-0 up. Now Alessandra sent Lonergen in the opposite direction 1-1. McNair hit the same spot as Grant had just scored from 2-1. That’s four penalties with three ex Makems and one Poolie involved.

County up next and scored with Hawkridge 2-2. Walker stepped up for Boro who despatched with aplomb making it 3-2 to Boro. Patching then calmly put it into the corner for County making it 3-3 with Tav up next. A little bit of gamesmanship from Fitzsimons in goal didn’t work as the youngster blasted it high into the roof of the net, 4-3 to Boro and now with a penalty advantage. Jones was up next for County knowing that a miss was curtains, Lonergen got down to the bottom right, getting a hand to it to keep it 4-3, sealing the evening and snatching the victory.

The game was definitely not one for the purist but it was entertaining and one that you couldn’t take your eyes off. Leaving the tactical error strewn car crash out of it for a moment, Mahmutovic for me was outstanding in the first half and very good in the second. McGinley grew into the game and Tav was a constant threat along with Johnson (once the WD40 started to seep in). Walker when he came on was superb and will have given TP the right sort of headache. Wood’s appearance was a fairy tale and Lonergen saved two penalties but overall I think Fletcher just edged things for his two goals.

Championship 2018-19: Week 3

Tue 14 Aug – 19:45: Boro v Notts County (EFL Cup)
Sat 18 Aug – 15:00: Bristol City v Boro

They say good things come to those who wait, well Tony Pulis has waited, stared out the window and waited some more, but all that has come was local lad on loan who unfortunately arrived injured. On the pitch everything looks Hunky Dory, the sheer power of Boro’s will has effortlessly levitated them to the top of the table, leaving most Boro followers in an unexpected state of bliss. However, Tony Pulis seems in a different kind of state altogether following the disappointment of the transfer window. It may well be enlightenment but in the true Buddhist sense of the meaning in that a “full comprehension of a situation” has been reached. The Boro boss had earlier in the week declared his squad is probably missing around five players if it is to be considered good enough for a promotion challenge. However, despite overseeing three unbeaten Championship games with his ‘bare bones’ outfit, Tony has failed to hide his disappointment that the performance of the club off the pitch has not remotely matched the one he’s been instrumental in helping his team produce on it.

After such an intense opening to the season, Tony Pulis will probably be rolling out his freebie 32Red yoga mat as a means to keep calm and focus on his breathing as he contemplates his navel. Online gambling addicts may even be able to get odds on which yoga poses the Boro manager opts to strike as he flicks through his beginners guide. The smart money being placed suggests he’ll possibly be drawn to Tadasana, or the mountain pose – although he may possibly be inspired by Neil Bausor to go with Shavasana, or the Corpse pose, which the novice is informed involves essentially laying down and doing nothing as the practitioner concentrate on relaxing, forgetting about time pressures and placing those deadlines to the back of their mind.

Like an expensive striker who flops on arrival on the burden of expectation, the Boro recruitment team have glaringly missed their targets – with no doubt most of the glaring coming from Tony Pulis. Most disappointed will perhaps be Neil Bausor’s dentist, who will sadly not get the opportunity to showcase his latest work as the Boro chief executive misses out on having his grinning photo taken with his brand new bestie at Hurworth. Whether this has caused any friction behind the scenes is open to conjecture, but Pulis seemed to suggest he kept his side of the bargain by selling some of his best players to raise the cash needed to get those identified replacements in. At least we know Steve Gibson hasn’t been stashing all the unspent cash to make a late bid for House of Fraser and happily that particular accolade of sequestering his manager’s transfer kitty belongs to Newcastle’s Mike Ashley – though the sight of a football chairman throwing his money into Binns could be seen as a somewhat poignant analogy.

It’s certainly tough at the top and the still relatively young head in charge of Boro has also seemingly got a lot of stress to work out of his burdened old shoulders as he tries to keep everyone happy. It may be hard for fellow chairman in the Championship to relate to his problems as they look enviously up at his table-topping club and its rather healthy bank balance. Perhaps Steve Gibson has sussed that spending big in the second tier doesn’t get you the equivalent amount of quality for all the millions spent (or wasted). Maybe the tightening of the purse strings is aimed at building a Fulham-type war chest to be used once promotion has been secured. Maybe he just fancies have some cash left when he finally decides to retire.

The Cottagers were regarded as one of the best sides last season but most of the players were still deemed inadequate to bridge the gap to the top tier by their club. They instead spent over £100m on transfers in the summer to build a squad capable of surviving and one can only imagine the wage bill too. The gulf between the Championship and Premier League is widely accepted now and the recent trend to spend big to gain promotion has probably not meant getting value for money. The fact that Boro lost out on many of their targets was possibly down to not being willing to be drawn into paying over the odds for players that were let’s face it just average. As for reports that the Besic deal fell through because his agent wanted a million quid for the trouble of getting a pen out of his jacket pocket to sign it off – well I suspect Steve Gibson may have suggested a better place where he could place that pen when he declined and returned it. Spending big only makes sense if you end up with the real deal and some of those being touted for many millions were 12 months earlier valued in the hundreds of thousands – which all sounds a trifle excessive.

Though you may recall that we’ve been here before, the beginning of the end of Karanka was probably that January transfer window that failed to sign any of the targets he so desperately wanted – widely believed to be PSG’s playmaker Jese Rodriguez, midfielder Robert Snodgrass of Hull and winger Bojan Krkic of Stoke. Perhaps they weren’t realistic, but instead the club brought in a Patrick Bamford who had hardly played any football in 12 month, a Championship-level Rudy Gestede and the much maligned ‘lad from Watford’ Guedioura. Needless to say Karanka was non-plussed and made his thoughts pretty clear: “We needed to improve the team, and the club knew a month and a half ago the players that I wanted.” In a less than subtle snipe at those who had arrived instead he added: “Teams in our position are signing players for £14m – we are signing players that didn’t play in the Championship.” He then concluded his venting with echoes of Tony Pulis’s sentiments: “I don’t know why we haven’t signed our targets. That is not my job. I am the coach.”

Last summer the club tried to make amends by letting Garry Monk go on a spending splurge and threw money at his targets until he had so many forwards that he didn’t know who to choose from. With Pulis deciding against spending in his first window, then dutifully selling his prize assets this summer, he no doubt expected to be given all the resources to sign his preferred targets. It appear it went wrong somewhere and now he’s feeling short-changed, much in the same way Karanka was. Whilst we shouldn’t condemn the club for refusing to give in to excessive demands from sellers and agents, we shouldn’t also forget that last summer Boro’s strategy was to force the market by making offers that were hard to refuse. In some ways, Boro were actually instrumental in inflating the Championship transfer market by paying £15m for Britt Assombalonga – a price-tag surely not easily justified based on his overall ability. Incidentally, Sean Dyche had an £8m bid a few weeks before he signed for Boro turned down after the then Forest manager, Mark Warburton, claimed he was potentially a £50m player and compared him to Eden Hazard and Ronaldo. All of which convinced Boro’s bargain hunters to quickly steal him away for less than a third of that price before the big boys stepped in. While some still think he could yet be a hazard for Boro, perhaps like Bamford (also suggested by some in the local media he could soon be in the £40-50m bracket) we may not be making a killing when selling him on.

With nearly three weeks left for Boro to make loan signings, Tony Pulis may need to remain patient for a bit longer before he can legitimately start melting down like another former manager. Perhaps Pulis is still getting over the departure of what he claimed the other players had jokingly called ‘his son’ in Adama Traore. Before heading to Wolves, Adama left a parting gift of 50 signed Boro shirts that will be randomly awarded to season card holders. It’s unclear whether Pulis will be seen wearing his own custom Adama T-Shirt that the club shop possibly produced for him after downing the bottles of Champagne that were given to them as a parting present from Ben Gibson. The carefully ironed-on letters apparently read: “Boro sold Adama Traore for £18m and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt”.

One player the Boro manger will be keen to hang on to will doubtless be Martin Braithwaite, who’s showed some of his best form for the club in the opening three games. However, there’s a sense of having that Déjà vu feeling again as the Danish forward is once again linked with a move to France. It would be a big loss if he said au revoir to his team-mates at the Stade Riverain on the Côtes du Nord-Est. He’s not really an out-and-out striker but offers the team a certain je ne sais quoi and is probably the closest we have to a number ten (he even wears it on the back of his shirt) unless the loan market brings someone special. Anyway, it’s hard to say if Pulis expects him to swap the agreeable climate of the Tees for that of the Dordogne and the Garone as he heads back to Bordeaux. The grapes on Teesside may be mainly of the sour variety if he leaves again, but Braithwaite appears to have blended well this season and seems to have the right attitude. Pulis has said any player who doesn’t want to be at the club can leave if they receive the right offer – adding that “Martin’s the same as all of the players, they are welcome to stay”. That didn’t sound like his manager was particularly determined to hang on to him – more like what you tell unexpected late guests when you answer the door in your dressing gown. Whether the sentiment of allowing any player to leave if the right offer arrives is the best way to build a top quality team at a club like Boro is debatable – it would mean in theory that anyone who catches the eye of a Premier League club could be off in January if they fancied it.

All the talk of missed targets and those who may still be leaving the club has thrown recruitment and planning into the spotlight once more. Buying and bringing in players is never an exact science and it’s a process that appears increasingly out of the control of the club. If Boro are now determined to get value for money rather than the traditional method of spending what it takes to get their man, then quiet transfer windows may be the norm. In such circumstance we should ask the pertinent question, what is the academy for? Surely it would be much better to bring youngsters through the ranks as ready replacements for those who will inevitably leave or need an upgrade. One of the things that Tony Pulis did when he arrived was to make sure the players at all levels trained and played in the same way as the senior side. It makes sense and in theory should provide a production line of new talent that can be more easily integrated into the squad. With Lewis Wing showing that he more than fits the shirt and Fry looking just as composed and promising as he did this time last season before that one error that exiled him, then that should be two players less to buy. Also Marcus Tavernier has surely shown enough to prevent him being loaned out and has some of that much needed pace and quick feet we’re sadly lacking.

It seems all too easy to overlook youngsters if your chairman will sign big cheques instead. Maybe this transfer window will be a wake-up call on how the club can best use their resources and what it is that attracts players to come to Boro over other choices. Apparently we missed out on our targets for “all kinds of reasons” – though the main reason was that none of them chose Boro. Of course Jordan Hugill chose to join Boro on loan from West Ham, but he was born in Middlesbrough, which no doubt was the main attraction. If we put to one side the burning ambition to play for Tony Pulis, it appears that looking in from the outside that there are possibly three reasons a player may join Boro – 1. They’re local, 2. It’s a step up in their careers or 3. The money. With regard to our missed targets, if the answer to the first two questions was ‘no’ then I suspect the problem may have been question three.

It seems the youngsters will get a further chance to impress on Tuesday as Boro enter the EFL Cup with a home tie against League Two side Notts County. It’s become a tradition in the early rounds of Mr Caraboa’s energy drink cup to rest your tired players and make as many changes as possible. Last season it gave some players the opportunity to remind Garry Monk that he’d signed them or were still at the club. In fact the performance of the so-called second-string appeared to be better than the team being selected for League games. I expect we’ll see starts from some of those yet to feature in this campaign, like Julien de Sart, Marvin Johnson, Harry Chapman and Nathan Wood – with likely starts for the under-employed Ashley Fletcher and Grant Leadbitter too. Dimi may get a run out in goal but in terms of defence there aren’t many options left other than those who are currently regular starter. Ayala is back in training but probably not ready to play and perhaps Paddy McNair will get some pitch time under his belt. No doubt Tavernier will also get a start but you would expect Lewis Wing to be rested after three games in a week. I suspect Tony Pulis will be minded to not risk anyone that he regards as a key player – though in some cases he may not have a choice. For those who can’t make it to the Riverside (and that may be quite a few regulars), it will be more or less the invisible game that is little more than a pre-season friendly in terms of importance – though there is a Wednesday night highlights show on Quest TV at 11.30pm should anyone be tempted to catch probably 20 seconds worth of Boro sometime after midnight. The show is as expected presented by Colin Murray, who is apparently deemed by law the only person allowed to present Football League highlights after moving from the BBC to Channel 5 and now Quest TV.

Then on Saturday, Boro will aim to continue their early stint at the top of the table as they travel to Ashton Gate to take on Bristol City. The Robins have drawn their opening two games, with a 1-1 at home to Forest on the opening day, and then coming back from 2-0 down to get a point at Bolton. Their new signing from Derby, the Austrian international Andreas Weimann has scored in both games – which may or may not be down to growing up in those favoured mountains. It will be a quick return for Boro’s new towering defender Aden Flint, so let’s hope he can reach the heights by making it a happy return with a goal and a clean sheet. Garry Monk’s team were not so fortunate last season as they ended up having to settle for a 2-1 defeat, with summer target Joe Bryan opening the scoring early in the second half before Aden Flint crossed three minutes later for Jamie Paterson give them a two-goal cushion. That win for Bristol City took them up to third, eight points ahead of Boro in 9th, who were now 15 points behind Wolves after less than half a season.

As the post-match interviewer from Radio Bristol nervously held out the microphone, manager Lee Johnson declared “If you’d told me we’d be eight points clear of Middlesbrough after 20 games I would have bitten your hand off” – thankfully the interviewer hadn’t made such a bold prediction and is still continues to work with a full complement of fingers. Though one person who would shortly be out of work in a few weeks was Garry Monk and he wasn’t at all happy with his players. He said after the poor display “I can only apologise to our travelling fans, they have spent a lot of hard-earned cash to follow the team tonight and that performance wasn’t good enough at all” – in fact one disgruntled fan had spent close to £50m in the hope of following his team all the way to the Premier League and was beginning to run out of patience.

So time for another busy week in the Championship and with three games down Boro have given the pessimists on Teesside some of that dreaded hope as the club sit on top of the mountain in not so quiet contemplation. Whether Tony Pulis will be given some hope from the recruitment team that he’ll be getting his promised new arrivals is anyone’s guess. Whatever happens in the next seven days, being asked to be patient may start to wear a bit thin – especially if Boro pick up any new injuries in the dead buffalo cup.