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THE GEORGE GALLOWAY ISSUE 30-1-06
In a week that Teddy Sheringham was linked with a move back to Spurs and Robbie Fowler returned to Liverpool, it was perhaps surprising that Stuart Boam wasn't linked with a move back to The Riverside to sure up Boro's leaky defence.
What we got instead was a weekend of not very exciting FA Cup action. Brentford saw to Sunderland in perhaps the biggest non-shock of the round and Arsenal once again wilted in front of physical opposition. Everton held Chelsea for the second time this season and Derby were knocked out by Colchester in the other most notable results of the round. Wake me up when we get to the quarter finals.
Let's do this.....
"Aah! It burns like a Glasgow bikini wax! Gaaaaah!"
In what would prove to be a week of contractual hi-jinks at The Riverside, Middlesbrough confirmed on Monday that they had terminated the contract of Abel Xavier.
The Portuguese international clogger was handed an eighteen-month ban but would probably have re-joined Boro when the club are battling for promotion from League One. However, Boro have decided to terminate the contract that Xavier signed in August. Thirty-three year-old Xavier has been banned since the urine sample he supplied after Boro's Uefa Cup clash with Xanthi contained more anomalies than a Liberal Democrat leadership election.
Xavier - who only made six appearances for Boro since joining the club from Roma - is expected to continue to fight against the ban and is considering taking his case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland. With two positive samples and a haircut that suggests opiate-related psychedelia, he'll need more than a bit of luck.
"Give them the beer! It will impair their motor skills."
Szilard Nemeth chose to swap one lot of relegation stragglers for another this week, after he secured a loan move to Ligue 2 bound outfit Strasbourg. Twenty-eight year-old Nemeth - who joined Boro from Inter Bratislava - will infuriate Strasbourg fans with his staggering array of poor finishing techniques until the end of the season.
With a record of just twenty-three goals in 117 Premiership matches, it's frankly surprising that Nemeth managed to negotiate his way out of the Riverside without hitting the door frame.
"Ah, the sweet couple of seconds before I remember why I'm sleeping on the lawn."
Boro's search for a new defender continues unabated. Last week, the club were heavily linked with Slavia Prague's Martin Latka, however Barry Silkman, Latka's English representative, has confirmed that Birmingham is now the Czech Under-21 international's most likely destination.
"We are talking with Birmingham and they are trying to do something with Slavia," Silkman sniffed between plates of foie gras. "A few things have changed in the last few days, but Middlesbrough are now out of the picture." It's a shame that Silkman didn't give up so easily when it came to bringing Fabio Rochemback to The Riverside.
With the Latka transfer now unlikely, Steve McClaren has turned his attention to Ljubo Milicevic, who, while he sounds like a character from Star Wars, is not in fact from forest planet Kashyyyk but Australia.
More surprisingly still, Milicevic plays for a club that Middlesbrough have never played, Switzerland's FC Thun. Perhaps Don McKay thought it was Newcastle? Anyhow, Milicevic is now awaiting a work permit to complete his move.
"There has been a bit of interest and one club - I don't want to say which - is putting an appeal to the home office that I should get a work permit," Milicevic told The Age (me neither, some sort of Saga-related paraphernalia, perhaps). "Other Australian players like David Zdrilic and Tony Popovic have won on appeal and got work permits, so there's a chance."
With Boro's recent record of completing vital paperwork, Milicevic probably shouldn't hold his breath.
"I'm going to come back with the greatest gift a husband can give his wife - an annulment from his secret wife!"
Not to play down the efforts of Messrs Xavier, Nemeth and Milicevic, but it was Keith Lamb who had Boro fans' tongues wagging more furiously than Dennis Rodman's wang on a trip to Stringfellows.
A radio phone-in conducted on Century that was supposed to allay fears that Boro is awash with bad feeling ended up causing an even bigger rift at the club, when Keith Lamb admitted that Steve McClaren hadn't signed his contract extension.
"There's a technical issue which is private between the club and Steve McClaren. The contract's been agreed, we've shaken hands on it, it's been signed by the club, Steve hasn't signed it, but there's no big issue on it. A deal is a deal as far as we're concerned," Lamb admitted, using the same playground logic that once saw this writer trade five packs of Fruit Pastilles for a Panini sticker of Aston Villa's Tony Daley.
"I don't think we'll get relegated," Lamb continued, sticking two fingers up and making wanker signs at fate, "and I don't think he'll [McClaren] get the England job."
Lamb was quite clear on whether McClaren should be relieved of his position as manager. "Do I think Steve has made too many mistakes and, as a consequence, do I think he should go? At the moment, I don't think he has. It's my judgement that he's made some mistakes, but everybody does," McClaren told listeners, as this writer subconsciously wondered what exactly was holding up George Boateng's new contract.
One of McClaren's most notable mistakes is, of course, Fabio Rochemback, and the candid response Lamb gave when asked about the Brazilian will have surprised fans. "Fabio hasn't played well since he came here but Steve says that he will come good. "Gabri is a mistake we won't be making," Lamb seethed, quashing rumours that Boro were about to sign another Barcelona no-hoper.
Lamb concluded by admitting, "The club is at a low ebb. I am concerned with the league position, I am concerned with the falling gates and I am concerned with the revenue stream. The only way we will sell the club is by winning matches, particularly at home, and by playing more entertaining football." I'm sure I heard someone else say that about a year ago. Now, who was it? Oh, that's right. The fans.
"You are an angel. Like Denzel Washington in The Preacher's Wife or Will Smith in Bagger Vance... or Slimer."
A response to Keith Lamb's comments from Camp McClaren (that's a generic term for his associates, not his Ru Paul-lookalike alter-ego) wasn't slow in coming.
A source close to McClaren told The Guardian, "Keith is stirring up trouble over nothing and you have to wonder whether he is trying to get Steve out of the club. Steve has agreed the contract in principle with Steve Gibson, Boro's Chairman."
"He hasn't signed because of one minor clause relating to a financial matter which just requires a bit of Tippex and a Biro" the source muttered, indicating that no one at Middlesbrough has heard of Microsoft Word. "He [McClaren] would have signed it long before now if it hadn't been left lying in Lamb's drawer waiting to be amended." Take that, Lamby.
Just as you thought things couldn't possibly sound any more sinister, the deep throat-esque source whispered, "Steve suspected something like this might happen when he was out of the country but he is determined to remain in charge of Middlesbrough for the next four seasons."
Unless Leeds, Newcastle or England come calling, one might assume.
"Another case of Monopoly-related violence, Chief."
Two days after Keith Lamb revealed that Steve McClaren hadn't signed his contract, enough Tippex had been found for the Boro Manager to put pen to paper live on Sky Sports News.
"Me and the chairman for the last four and a half years have had an excellent working relationship, great trust between each other and last November we finally agreed on a new contract that will take me to 2009 and shook hands on that deal", McClaren blathered to journalists who wished they'd got the assignment to cover the European Championship qualifying draw instead.
"In fact I have been waiting for the last few weeks and as this came out, the club have come back and sorted this out - and to stop all the conspiracy theories and settle everything down - I am delighted to sign the contract in front of you now to reaffirm my commitment to this contract and to the football club," and because I've got fuck all chance of getting the England job now, he stopped short of saying.
McClaren also sought to address reports that the Boro dressing room is not a harmonious one. "Unrest? Unhappiness, anger, disappointment - I would not expect the dressing room or staff room to be happy at the present situation we are in," McClaren moaned. "The past two months for whatever reasons, we have not been winning football matches and we are very angry about that, very unhappy - unrest is a bad word." So is 'relegation', but that hasn't stopped you picking Rochemback every week, has it, Steve?
"Yes Mark Schwarzer went on the transfer list, yes Ugo Ehiogu agreed a deal to go to West Brom which may have unsettled things - and everything in January is unsettled anyway - it is a nightmare of a month." Coming from the man who signed Michael Ricketts three January's ago, you can't help but understand exactly what he means.
"Oh, come on, people! The prison Nutcracker Suite is one week away, and I don't see five sugarplums! I see five guys who don't know their moves and don't seem to care! There! I said it."
Boro's run without a victory over professional opposition was extended to 865 after they played out a 1-1 draw with Coventry City at The Ricoh Arena on Saturday afternoon.
After Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink's opener had been cancelled out by a Stern John strike, Steve McClaren said, somewhat unambitiously, "It was important we didn't get beaten, and that's the big thing we take out of this."
"It was never going to be easy, but we ground out a result due to first-class efforts, commitment and attitude," McClaren told the BBC, somehow labouring under the delusion that Middlesbrough weren't playing lower division opposition that they should easily have beaten.
"That was epitomised by a seventeen year-old in Lee Cattermole [isn't that illegal? - Juvenile Jokes Ed]. We are having to throw in the kids, but we need our key men to come back." Having to throw kids in? Wasn't thirty-three year-old Doriva on the bench?
The Skinny
The past week has posed all sorts of questions about the future of Middlesbrough Football Club but there were two things that epitomized Boro at the moment.
On the field, twenty-eight minutes into the Coventry game, Ugo Ehiogu got injured. Matthew Bates is on the bench. A like-for-like substitution is in the offing, you'd assume. Nope, Stuart Parnaby switches from right-back to left, Emanuel Pogatetz moves into central defense and Bates comes on as right-back. Now we're left with a right-footed left-back, a centre-half at right-back and a left-back at centre-back.
Off the field, in the week when Sven Goran Erikkson was sacked/resigned from the England job, the normally circumspect Keith Lamb tells the world that Steve McClaren hasn't signed his contract. McClaren, Lamb and Steve Gibson are all quick to tell everyone that the lack of a squiggle from McClaren makes no difference, but then order in Sky Sports News to film the momentous event anyway.
If anyone can tell me what the fuck those two examples were about, I'd appreciate it. And is it likely that such unnecessary fannying about is part of the reason we're failing so badly at the moment? I can't help but think so.
As for the forthcoming week, Boro win at Sunderland on Tuesday or they get relegated. Simple.
And with that....
BACK TO JAMES BASSETT INDEX
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