Middlesbrough – a State of the Nation

Article by Middlesbrough Correspondent Mike Baker

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Middlesbrough finished 2013/14 in 12th place, perfectly mid-table, within the Championship. Our goal difference was a healthy +12, better than any team outside the playoff positions apart from Reading. We scored more goals than the majority of our rivals and were just as capable in terms of those we conceded. In winning six of our last eight league fixtures, we ended the season strongly and have earned the right to look forward to the coming campaign with something close to optimism.

And yet it’s a guarded good feeling, the kind that comes with a sixth consecutive year in football’s second tier to follow and rare signs across that period that we have ever looked like leaving it. By now a Championship mainstay, each summer has been heralded with ‘This is going to be our season!’ type messages from the club, without the results to match. During our long stay outside the Premiership, Boro have endured various transitional moments, played under four full-time managers and looked increasingly like a side suited to our status. Whilst players with top flight pedigrees continue to ply their trade at the Riverside, with each Championship summer we have looked more like a team that belongs in the division, less and less like one gearing up for a genuine promotion challenge.

Our stadium tells its own story. The Riverside was opened in 1995 as heralding a golden future of football played in the Premiership and hosting the very best teams. Back then, in times that seem surreally heady compared with now, the ground was filled to capacity, excited Teessiders stretching their personal budgets to witness something special taking place on the pitch. These days we rarely top the 15,000 mark, significantly less than half full, and the rows of empty seats have turned our home into something like a shell. Any atmosphere generated echoes around ghostly upturned, unused benches.

Boro’s current manager is Aitor Karanka, our first appointment from outside Britain. Best known for serving as Jose Mourinho’s Assistant during the Special One’s time at Real Madrid, Karanka also enjoyed a five-year playing career with Los Blancosand appeared once for the Spanish national side. Urbane and articulate, his is a fine pedigree within the game, which raises questions about why he should choose Middlesbrough as his first full managerial position. The clear emotional ties with us that propelled his predecessor, Tony Mowbray, into the role aren’t there, which is perhaps a good thing because he is that bit more expendable if things go wrong, as they did with ‘Mogga.’

Yet the concerns remain, even as Karanka oversaw a significant upturn in our fortunes, guiding us to a finishing position that was only four places higher than where we were prior to his appointment, whilst gaining 48 points from his 31 matches (it was 16 from 15 beforehand) and conceding just 26 goals. The new manager did exactly what his short-term brief demanded, arresting a slide towards the wrong end of the table and ‘steadying the ship’, turning a defence that was leaking goals recklessly into one of the division’s meanest. This he achieved with many of the same players who had failed to deliver for Mowbray, alongside several additions drafted in on loan, notably Aston Villa’s veteran goalkeeper, Shay Given, and Nigerian defender Kenenth Omeruo from Chelsea.

The fans’ worries arise partly from gritty experience. We had a similar ‘spike’ when Mowbray took charge and immediately arrested a nosedive towards the relegation places, yet despite some passages containing great promise was sacked when he seemed to be heading in the same direction. At least Mogga enjoyed some good times; a great deal of money was invested in his predecessor, Gordon Strachan, which was ultimately squandered as his dream of filling Boro’s ranks with steely experience, mainly from the Scottish Premier League, turned to ruin and near disaster. The real tragedy of Mowbray’s tenure was that so much of it involved severe financial restraints placed upon him as he had to work with well paid players recruited by Strachan who simply weren’t delivering on the field.

Karanka doesn’t have this problem. He took over a squad that fits largely within Boro’s efforts to meet Financial Fair Play restrictions, but this doesn’t mean he can embark on a spending bonanza. The limits within which Mowbray operated are going to remain as the Riverside crowds stay low. Unless the people vote with their wallets and buy en masse into the club’s vision, and there’s little chance of that happening within one of the country’s most deprived regions, then Karanka will rely on the same lower league bargains and loanees that have punctuated recent transfer windows. The outcry from supporters to sign Given permanently at the end of his two months here was understandable but impossible to meet. Shay was a classy and authoritative figure in goal, as befits a keeper of his stature and experience, yet he was on impressive Premiership wages and Villa required Boro to meet a bigger proportion of them in order to prolong his stay, which was never on the cards. It’s likely to be the same with Omeruo and forward Danny Graham; both did much to endear themselves to the fans but they were temporary presences and are almost certainly going to stay that way.

In the meantime, three more teams have been expelled from the Premiership, all commanding parachute payments that make them a more likely prospect to bounce back up than being usurped into the promotion slots by the likes of us. The unpredicted yet welcome form of Burnley in 2013/14 means surprise packages can and do emerge; if they can do it then why can’t we? The Championship, however, is a fierce and dogged division, crammed with broadly equal sides fully capable of beating each other and where solid organisation can often undermine flashier outfits, which is why a side like QPR can fail to meet its undoubted potential. Boro were a mere eight points shy of making the playoffs, yet each of the five teams between sixth placed Brighton and us – Reading, Blackburn, Ipswich, Brighton and Nottingham Forest – made it to where they did on merit, most winning just half of their matches to highlight the relative parity amongst them. We drew as often as we won, which suggests we ended up exactly where we deserved.

Turning those single point affairs into victories will be the big challenge of Karanka’s 2014/15. Added to that is the fact he’ll have to do it with limited resources, which at least means he’ll have the emerging genius to go with his credentials if that is what he goes on to achieve.

Next time – a squad review, beginning with the goalkeepers and defence.

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