|
|
THE THIN LINE 20-5-05
Results are what matter in this game and the season was a successful one because Boro achieved the aim of qualifying for Europe through the league. But just how much more successful could it have been but for our mid-season slump?
It must be difficult to operate in today's stifled transfer market, so what Keith Lamb and Steve McClaren did during the pre-season was nothing short of genius.
First Michael Reiziger, fresh from his impressive performances in Euro 2004 was snapped up from Barcelona. "Middlesbrough is very romantic." he stated. Quite.
Then finally the striker that we had so badly needed during the 2003/04 season arrived. The Hitman, Mark Viduka was traded in for The Missman, Michael Ricketts. It was probably the greatest piece of business that the club has ever done. The official line is that the two deals were not connected.
Ray Parlour arrived at Darlington station on the InterCity and within a couple of hours, was a Boro player. Here was a world class player signed from the English League Champions! Now things were getting very serious indeed.
But they got even more serious when a press conference was announced for a Friday lunchtime in early July. In walked Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink of all people and now we were contenders instead of also rans.
Red shirts with a white chestband, the UEFA Cup, the best strike force in the league, an opening day derby fixture... It had never been like this before...
Jimmy scored on his debut, The Hand of Smog giving us a draw against the Geordies. We then found ourselves 3-1 up at Highbury and although we eventually went down 5-3, make no mistake, we went down fighting and gave Arsenal one hell of a fright as they equalled Cloughie's record of longest run of league games without a defeat.
At Craven Cottage three days later Boro turned in a dominant and remarkable perfomance. Mark Viduka also scored on his Boro debut and played a major part in one of the best Boro performances for many a year. Blowing kisses to the crowd as he left the field turned him into an instant favourite and against Birmingham a fortnight later, he bagged both goals in a 2-1 home win.
Meanwhile, Jimmy took another step towards becoming a Teesside legend with a screaming free kick that saw off Crystal Palace. After five games, Mark and Jimmy were on three goals a piece and Boro were fourth with ten points.
Then came the spectacle that we had been waiting for years to see. Boro's first game in Europe and as well as being a marvellous occasion - one to rank alongside the Cup Final perhaps? - it served as a yardstick of just how far the Boro had come.
Middlesbrough showed that it had a football team to be reckoned with that night, seeing off the Czech champions with a panache performance and three superb goals.
However the form book was torn up at Goodison Park when this season's surprise package Everton beat us 1-0. That was followed up with our first home defeat of the season, inflicted by a Chelsea side who stretched the rules and got away with it.
Despite our 3-0 lead in the UEFA Cup tie, relief was palatable when we finished the job in Ostrava. On the following Sunday with a depleted team, we went to Old Trafford and so very nearly came away with our second win of the year from Steve McClaren's old workplace.
The week that we played Ostrava and United was the week that confirmed that certain members of our Youth team could take the step up if necessary. James Morrison and Tony McMahon proved themselves to be worthy of a place among the Premiership elite and like Stewey Downing, probable future England caps.
They put us in The Group of Death in the UEFA Cup and not only did we come out alive, we won the group and won it in some style. One of the all time great Boro moments was watching Lazio being slaughtered in a classic Boro display that was reminiscent of the 73-74 side and the way that they used to annihilate opposing teams. Here were the favourites for the cup being put to the sword by Teesside's Finest.
However, we surrendered the Carling Cup in November at eventual finalists Liverpool, playing a weakened formation against a good side. It hurt to go out of the competition as holders, though we could console ourselves with the fact that we looked very hot in Europe and were fifth in the league by this time.
November itself was a month of mixed fortunes. We suffered our first European defeat at Villareal and went down at White Hart Lane, two results that knocked our confidence.
Yet in the same month, we took revenge on Liverpool in a stirring 2-0 win at The Riverside and grabbed a win at West Brom after the miss of the season in the dying seconds from Kanu. It was the new West Brom manager's first game and Bryan Robson would have cherished a win over his old side. If we had played six weeks later, he would probably have got it.
December went very well indeed, the first four games yielding three wins and a draw and eleven Boro goals. Mark Viduka scored two sublimely brilliant strikes against Manchester City and Partizan Belgrade were torn to pieces at The Riverside.
Aston Villa were another December visitor to Teesside and despite a 3-0 victory, we did not play well that day. Then we went to Birmingham on Boxing Day.
The injuries had already started to pile up at the half way stage of the season and when Viduka limped out of the St Andrew's clash, it signalled the start of the downward spiral. Already without Ugo Ehiogu, George Boateng, Gaizka Mendieta and many, many more, the squad was now looking very thin indeed.
The cracks really showed at Birmingham and we didn't play well again until February. One last thing that needs to be resolved in our 'brave new world' is our festive season form. Old Boro were always rubbish at Christmas. So were New Boro this season.
Our form was abysmal in January. Defeats to Manchester United (twice) and Chelsea cost us league positions and we threw away an eighty-first minute 4-1 lead at Carrow Road, three defensive errors gifting Norwich an unlikely point.
The only bright spot in January was Bolo Zenden squaring up to Scottish hooligan Duncan Ferguson as a mass brawl broke out in the Boro goalmouth. Ferguson was lucky.
With confidence down - a result of the Norwich debacle? - we did not manage to consolidate our league position in February. Games that we would have won at a canter in the early part of the season were now major uphill battles, although we did play well at high flying Bolton.
Defeat at Portsmouth saw Malcolm Christie's scoring return from a broken leg. A few days later, it was broken again for the third time in less than two years.
Come the end of the season, would we rue the dropped points against Portsmouth and Charlton? The UEFA Cup returned in February and Boro raised their game to see off Austrian champions AK Graz. We had made the last sixteen and a March double header with Sporting Lisbon was penned in.
March was a very black month for Boro. Played four, lost four is the grim statistic and with it, our last chance of silverware this season was gone.
The defeats to Aston Villa and Southampton were hard to swallow because of the manner of the performances. We looked lethargic and disinterested and very, very short of confidence.
The defeats to Sporting Lisbon were painful because we threw it away when we conceded three in a mad twenty minutes at the start of the home leg. We almost staged an amazing comeback with two late goals, Joseph Job's bicycle kick restoring some belief and if we had put our chances away in the away leg, well who knows?
But it was not to be for Boro in the UEFA Cup this year and with eight games remaining going into April, we owed it to ourselves to qualify through the league for next year's UEFA Cup. Otherwise it would have to be the Intertoto Cup and nobody wanted that.
April showers seemed to wash away the doom and gloom of the winter's poor displays and with Mark Viduka and George Boateng returning for the Crystal Palace match, things suddenly appeared brighter again.
Mark only lasted eleven minutes at Selhurst Park before hobbling off but we battled our way to three points and the coveted seventh place now looked like it could be on.
Our injury list was not improving though and the situation was summed up by Mark Schwarzer jarring his back in the warm-up before we played Arsenal. It was now turning into a tragi-com. On the positive side, it gave Brad Jones the chance to show what he could do and he proved over the next few games that we have a more than capable deputy to Skippy in the squad.
Until he caught chickenpox and joined the casualties on the sicknote list. We lost to Arsenal when we were the better side. We really could have won that game after the way that we held off their big guns and we took heart from that performance. It was to be our last defeat of the season.
A poorly contested draw with Fulham was followed by a rousing 4-0 spanking of West Brom on Robbo's Return to The Riv. Tottenham and Manchester City were our big rivals for the final qualification berth and we still had to play both in the final two fixtures.
But first, the Geordies lay in wait but they were unable to break down our dogged defence and we left with the point that we needed and added another one at Anfield a few days later.
The game against Tottenham was a massive occasion. A win would leave us needing just a point at Manchester a week later and we did it with a cool calculated performance. Now, it was between us and City for the last place in Europe.
And after all that had happened this season, it all came down to a penalty kick with three minutes of the last game remaining. Fifty-one matches of tension and drama and it all hinged on Robbie Fowler against Mark Schwarzer.
It was a legendary penalty save by Skippy and it made our season a successful one. As for next season, there are limits to what we can achieve but only those that we saddle ourselves with.
Until August.
Steve
BACK TO STEVE G INDEX
|
|
|
|
