Author: Si

Modern football is as much a game as a personality contest. It is the most appealing personalities that endure in tandem with footballing gifts. Results, statistics and even technique alone are not enough in a world where fans need heroes to believe in – those who allow their intense desire, desperation even, to succeed their way at the expense of everything else are in danger of alienating the fans. Aitor Karanka is learning this the hard way.

No one loves the top dog – everyone loves the underdog, the figure who combines guts, endeavour and the will to prove any doubters wrong with considerable ability. Jordan Rhodes had all of this, and much more.

Rhodes’ appeal at Boro transcended that of the archetypal goal poacher we already knew he was. Months previously he had made no secret of his desire to join the then upwardly mobile Karankanaut, reuniting with his Uncle Steve (Agnew, not Gibson) while firing a club to promotion.

His affable and popular manner off the pitch pleased everyone, and his humility on it was admirable (at Birmingham, he was clearly reluctant to claim an equaliser from a horrendous goalkeeping error, regardless of the goal’s importance). His transfer fee and considerably large wages were irrelevant: he felt like one of us, someone who plugged into the “we shall overcome” mentality of a region repeatedly hard done by.

That, in a way, was the problem. In the days leading up to his arrival, Karanka’s Boro seemed almost anything but hard done by, triumphing through collective strength to once enjoy a healthy lead at the top of the Championship, with a game in hand. The possibility that his impending arrival upset the collective and paved the way for the departure of the low-scoring but popular Kike Garcia could be raised, but it doesn’t hold much water: Rhodes’ intuitive understanding with a rejuvenated Gaston Ramirez led to a greater openness in Boro’s games, especially home encounters with Cardiff and Ipswich and the penultimate game at Birmingham.

We can look back on it now and say this did wonders for entertainment, but not necessarily for a manager and a club who, at the time, needed to ensure that the right things were done at all costs. It arguably placed him at a quandary with Karanka and modern football in general. As good as Rhodes’ off-the-ball movement and knack of finding the right place at the right time might be, it did not come accompanied with the right finish often enough. And at a time when we needed more goals to ease the pressure on us during the run in, this, and his lack of pace, did not work in his favour: quite possibly playing a major part in his relative shunning this season before the move to Sheffield Wednesday.

To be fair to Rhodes, confidence issues played their part. When you move to a bigger club, for a massive fee, there is a greater pressure on you to perform, and every missed chance receives higher scrutiny. Higher still, maybe, was the pressure on him to adapt to the modern day requirements of a top level No. 9: being flexible and tenacious enough to regularly act as a supply striker from out wide if need be, or being big and physical enough to lead the line and bring others into play.

At the top tier, the need for a forward to be relatively clinical is paramount if he’s doing little else. Otherwise, he becomes over-reliant on a very healthy supply of assists which a newly promoted team that likes to pass the ball through the middle can’t be regularly trusted to provide. This, in turn, leads to the forward getting easily swallowed up – and frustrated.

But, to give Rhodes even more credit, he soldiered on, and handled his omission with great dignity. Much less dignified was the online furore that arose from his absence, the kind that elevates the ability of players who don’t play. I’m talking about The Cult Of The Missing Men which also surrounded the absence of Luke Williams, Adam Reach, Scott McDonald and Nicky Bailey from Tony Mowbray’s Boro.

As long as those on the pitch fail to deliver, the clamour for The Missing Men grows, and the hullabaloo surrounding their absence risks becoming far more damaging than the player not playing. I wonder if I’m alone in believing that Karanka would have been more open-minded towards Rhodes this season had the danger of one man upstaging the efforts of an entire club not been so prominent. A distasteful ruthlessness is not merely recommended but demanded in the Premier League. How often, because of sentiment, do we backtrack to praise the man who isn’t there at the expense of the men who are?

Rhodes had already been an underdog by battling to adapt to a system that didn’t really suit him and eventually coming good with a purple patch of five goals that were invaluable to promotion. Now, he was an underdog for not being given a chance. The same fans who had labelled him a waste of money when he missed sitters were clamouring for his appearance.

It would be wrong to criticise fan reaction too much. I know opinions flip-flop depending on timing, manner and circumstance, but the extremity of the reaction seemed, at times, undeniably harmful.

Again, not that this bothered Rhodes. He gave his all whenever he actually appeared, so much so that when he did come good, the response was overwhelmingly positive. The final fifteen minutes at Bolton last season are enduring evidence of this.

I think, as a consequence, we wanted Rhodes to be a great Boro forward. It is no wonder then that perhaps sentimentality is clouding our judgement in the search for a heroic narrative, another guy who, like Albert Adomah might have, found his way from the lower leagues to triumph at the top. And the fact that we’ll never know what might have been will uncomfortably linger with us.

But Rhodes has moved on, and we must too. Far better that we forever recognise him as an oasis of welcome simplicity in a sea of tactical complication – a centre forward who liked to score goals, put himself about the right way and made an invaluable contribution to our promotion. For that, he should always be appreciated – and remembered.

Logic-defying substitutions. They’re more common than you think.

It’s documented in The Secret Footballer (essential reading) that in a must-win game for Manchester City at St. James’s Park in the 2011-12 title race, it was easy to imagine fans from the blue half of Manchester shouting for another striker to come on as the score remained 0-0 with half an hour to go. Instead, then manager Roberto Mancini replaced Samir Nasri, an attacking midfielder, with defensive midfielder Nigel De Jong.

One wouldn’t have been alone in scratching their head, but the change worked perfectly: Yaya Toure, who had previously been shielding the back four, moved into a more forward role, from which he scored twice, the first following a one two with Sergio Aguero from a De Jong pass.

Lesson learned? As TSF put it: “There is nothing lucky or accidental about good management. Having an intimate knowledge of each player is vital in today’s game and… makes the difference between success and failure.”

All this is something we have often been prone to witnessing, or enduring, under Aitor Karanka, particularly in the Premier League.

Calls to give Jordan Rhodes more of a chance this season have generally been put to one side or ignored altogether, twice in favour of defensive midfielder Grant Leadbitter instead. It’s impossible not to feel for Rhodes – we could write a whole blog on that – but with a bit of thought it’s also impossible not to consider how Leadbitter’s qualities can be useful even when chasing a game.

An astute Boro fan named Ian Smith informed me that near the conclusion of the Leicester match, the club captain actually played a few direct balls over the top of Leicester’s defence to get Boro in behind them, which no other Boro player had previously done. Similarly, the preference of Friend over Downing as an attacking substitution, while illogical on the surface, is understandable when we consider Friend’s promising forays into the box of late vs. Downing’s frequently wretched deliveries.

As football coverage has broadened we’ve all been schooled more and more in what players should be doing and what substitutions should be made, while perhaps being unaware of what each player can really offer for the best of the team. I’m not alone in having favourite players that aren’t picked for seemingly inexplicable reasons or being frustrated by changes (or a lack of them, take your pick), but when watching Boro, especially this season, it’s hard not to admire the steps Karanka and his coaches are taking to build Boro into a successful side at the highest level.

Like a certain Sir Alex Ferguson once did with Manchester United. I’m sure, considering Boro’s struggles this season, that Fabio’s comments about AK being like Sir Alex were met with guffaws, but the similarities are there – in fact, they are numerous.

One being Fabio’s point that “United built everything on a sound defence” – and so they did! It was said that Cantona was the difference between United and the rest in the early-to-mid-nineties, but what surely separated them from Keegan’s Entertainers and Roy Evans’ Spice Boys were Schmeichel, Bruce, Pallister and Irwin. Similarly, when the Red Nosed One initially broke the club’s transfer record in the summer of 1998, it was for a defender – Jaap Stam, who joined Ronny Johnsen and/or Henning Berg in the back two of Fergie’s Second Great Team. The titles and European Cup triumph of 2006-09 owed as much to Ronaldo and Rooney as the foundations of Ferdinand, Vidic and Evra.

If AK is not renowned for archetypal goalpoachers – only one of Graham, Bamford and Rhodes has truly succeeded under him – was Fergie all that different? Van Nistelrooy aside, it served him better to have jacks of more than one trade occupying the front line, from Mark Hughes, to Dwight Yorke, to Louis Saha, to Carlos Tevez. Goalscorers like Diego Forlan and Javier Hernandez didn’t have the best of times at United. Nor, initially, did a certain Andy Cole – but his conversion from goalscorer to footballer is one of United’s many success stories. As it perhaps should have been for one Albert Adomah, a master of one trade turned into a jack of many for the good of Boro as a whole.

Furthermore, his best midfields were a combination of character and not-always-obvious creativity that worked in pairs or as a trio. AK, one senses, is slowly building towards this – the recent promotion of Marten De Roon to a more forward role, for example, is gradually reaping dividends, with three goals to prove it. Both recognise the value of an experienced goalkeeping international, or standing by those who initially don’t look like finding their way – the ultimate success of David De Gea and the settling in of Victor Valdes is testament to this.

And both thrive in hugely competitive environments, delivering drama not through doing things the easy way but the hard way, bouncing back against the odds and proving people wrong. Among others, Fergie had “You can’t win anything with kids!”, a young Mourinho and losing both an eight-point lead and the title to City to contend with. Last season AK’s Boro were at one point seemingly running away with the title before wretched form and an unfortunate incident intervened… but then, with the chips down and the pressure on more than ever, the club ultimately achieved promotion.

Another similarity that has not gone unnoticed, for better or worse, is the unfortunate discarding of popular or gifted players (and once, in Boro’s case, coaches) – something that we fans find very hard to take even if it is for the greater good, such is the sentiment in the game. Talented players like Paul McGrath, Norman Whiteside and Kevin Moran were sold before Fergie had even won anything, long before the famous Ince-Hughes-Kanchelskis sale, and later, Stam, Beckham and Van Nistelrooy all made way. Often it is not the quantity of the fall outs or departures that is the problem, for both Fergie and especially AK, but the quality. When AK has dismissed, sold or ignored a player, or coach, they tend to be loyal club servants or local lads (Steele, Hignett, Woodgate, Downing), talented creatives (Adomah, Carayol, Wildschut, Tomlin) or goalscorers (Rhodes) and because of that, they remain etched in the memory as black marks. Like Fergie before him, AK’s greater relative success for Boro brings greater scrutiny and thus the pressure on him is amplified when things go wrong.

Something that we know that he needs to be better at or at least more consistent at dealing with. While I laud him for his conduct during Albertgate (despite Adomah’s public protest in the form of the transfer request, AK stood firm and kept a squad together which won two games out of two), Charltongate is something else entirely and absolutely cannot be repeated. Fans of AK who’ve seen The Damned United will be especially thankful Steve Gibson is not Sam Longson.

But mistakes – which Fergie has made repeatedly himself – are also there to be learned from. And, to paraphrase Mr. Kipling, if Aitor Karanka can keep his head when all around him are losing theirs and blaming it on him, his and Boro’s rewards may well be numerous – as Fergie’s were.