|
|
HAIL TO STEVE McCLAREN 3-8-04
There is still a hardcore section of the Boro support that are anti Steve McClaren. Check out some of the various Boro message boards around the Internet and you will occasionally find people with user names that indicate their wish to see our manager fired and usually their rhetoric echoes these sentiments. My message to these people is 'Pack it in and wise up!'
Three years ago, Steve McClaren inherited a crumbling and ageing Boro squad who despite doing the business for Terry Venables the previous season, were simply not up to the task of fulfilling the club's and the supporter's ambitions. Within those three years, Steve has rebuilt the squad and nurtured it to a condition where no weak links exist, there are no passengers and we even have strength in depth, to a certain point.
It is the first time since Jack Charlton's day that we have had the latter quality and we haven't even considered the fact that the 2004 FA Youth Cup winners will be threatening to break through in to the first team squad in a couple of years time. Indeed, the skipper of that side, Tony McMahon has a great chance of playing in Michael Reiziger's place on opening day against Newcastle. Boro look well and truly on the way to success.
McClaren's contribution to that FA Youth Cup victory should never be underestimated, as there is little doubt that the club's youth policy is his brainchild. Never forget the esteem that the club is now held in on a national level, compared to how we were viewed when Bryan Robson was boss. I would love to think that the national newspapers, The London Evening Standard, The BBC, ITV and Sky will back us to the hilt in Europe this season. If it happens, it will be a remarkable achievement and it could well happen because Steve McClaren has altered the perspective of Middlesbrough Football Club, so that the impression that outsiders have of us now is of a big club who look poised to win trophies.
I should have said 'more trophies' in that previous sentence. Whether you agree or disagree with the above points, the fact remains that Steve McClaren is the only manager in Boro's one hundred and twenty eight and a half year history to have won a major trophy. I say with confidence that he won't be the last but whatever happens in the future, he will always be the first to have done so and that can never be changed. He is the man who broke the mould. The manager who took us to a new level. The one who brought home the sacred first cup. The man who defied the poltergeist of years of near misses and painful falls at the final hurdle. He who delivered. And I think that he will deliver again in 2005.
Jack Charlton said in 1976, as he resigned as Boro manager, that a manager should never spend more than four years at any club. I hope that those words do not come back to haunt the club in this, Steve's fourth year in charge. However, if he were to be offered the England, Manchester United or Rangers posts or even offered the chance to become manager of any other club perceived as being bigger than Boro and turned it down, what would that say about our future? Everything, I suspect.
Until next week.
Steve
BACK TO STEVE G INDEX
|
|
|
|
