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ARE YOU SURE THE GRASS IS GREENER? 29-11-06
Peter Holmes
Some of those old sayings were so spot-on and are even relevant in the contemporary egg and micro-chips noughties. Idioms that have soaked into the fabric of speech, one's your Mam and Dad picked up from your Gran and Grandad, gems of succinct truth which are passed along from generation to generation. Usually they are poetic, short, sharp, very wise and profoundly correct. You pull one of them out of the memory to suit any occasion and save yourself a long-winded explanation into the bargain.
One classic phrase of warning which when applied to Middlesbrough Football Club is very, very true is; 'The grass is not always greener on the other side!'
When somebody leaves the staff of our Beloved, Middlesbrough Football Club, the pre-conception generally - well from Fleet Street - is that they are leaving for pastures greener and supposedly sunnier. Agents spin the spin and their client gives some monosyllabic grunt about; 'A bigger club, more opportunity for the Champions League, they were my favourite team when I was a boy, I've always wanted to play for them, further my international aspirations! Wank, wank, wankety, wank!'
Pure shite! Ignore all that crap, read their spin as more lucrative contract at supposed bigger club. The essence of it all is that they are just greedy grabbing bastards who sniff yet more money to stash in the empty bedrooms of their mock Tudor mansions.
Arsehole! Why not be honest about it, we'd respect them more in the morning?
"Now then Bolo, why did you decide to leave Boro after they've been so good to you and resurrected your career from the doldrums as well as winning you a medal?"
"Well, the truth is I've only got a five bedroom house and the Euros are spilling into the passageway, so I got offered a six bedroom Tuscan maison with all the trimmings in the Wirral, so Liverpool it is!"
When those traitors disappear from the Riverside and walk through those iconic Ayresome gates for the last time, I frankly do not give a small rodents constricted poo-hole what becomes of them or their poxy career from that point. Although perversely I keep my radar scanning for signs of failure as if to tell myself I told you so, to get some dark pleasure from the plonker not producing the form for their new paymaster, form that made them a stalwart in the glorious scarlet and white of Boro. In fact, the truth is, most players who leave our club end up on an injury riddled spiral to sheer oblivion and a far less illustrious career with one of our peers.
What prompted these musings was the news that Monsieur Franck Queudrue has copped a bad injury for his new club Fulham after only fourteen games for the Cottagers. In my opinion, his move to Fulham was a backward step anyway, a very backward step, because I still think Fulham will be in the midst of a relegation dogfight by March.
Francky was rightly a much loved Boro hero because of his swashbuckling all action displays at left back for five seasons, three of which were particularly consistent and classy. I know it's early days but he's done shag all for Fulham and now he's got a very serious injury, a very nasty gash on his ankle.
Look at Bolo Zenden, the ex Barcelona, Chelsea and Boro left winger who was offered a very lucrative contract extension at Boro the season before last and departed anyway. Old Pa Zenden played Ginger, Gibbo and Lamb along for months in protracted then stalled contract negotiations. Let's face it here, Boro were the club who put faith in the bloke and let him place his flag on the map of English football. This was during a spell where he finally showed a level of consistency promised of that early Dutch league potential to become a good player again, and by all accounts, an inspirational motivator within the dressing room ranks. His Dad, who is also his agent, talked him in to going to then European Champions Liverpool and Zenden junior has either been injured ever since or you've guessed it. Shite!
He spends so much time on the treatment table at Anfield that his wife thinks his brand of after-shave is Dettol!
Then we have the saga of Christian Ziege, one of the most accomplished left backs to grace the English game, a man whose career we renewed in the Premier league with Boro after a stint with one of Europe's G14 giants, AC Milan. His slimy back-stabbing agent had a trigger clause inserted into the fine print of his client's contract which stated that he could move if someone offered 5.5 million or above.
This is exactly what Liverpool just happened to do - offer just enough to release the trigger and the golden bullet - that's after Ziege's agent let the scabby Scousers know about it of course. Well the rest is now consigned to history but it became very acrimonious and it ensued in a court settlement. Gibbo won undisclosed compensation from Liverpool because Boro as a minimum would have wanted seven plus million for the acne faced traitor from one of his various suitors.
His career at Liverpool you may ask? Shite!
Spent so much time in plaster he was individually sponsored by Portland Cement!
Even the great Juninhio, a player who captured the collective hearts of the Boro mafia like no other in recent living memory had a chequered career in his time away from the comfortable umbrella of the Riverside. First time at Atletico Madrid he began brilliantly but suffered a vicious tackle resulting in a broken leg resulting in him missing the Brazilian squad for World Cup '98. Ironic really, as the main reason he moved to LaLiga in the first place was to increase his chances of playing for his beloved Brazil.
Then after the third stint at Boro, he moved on a Bosman to Celtic, who where then managed by Martin O'Neill. Expectations were sky high at Parkhead about the effect the little fellah could have for the Bhoys. After one excellent game at the start of the campaign against the Gers, in the Old Firm blockbuster, his form became patchy and you guessed it, the overall analysis of his Celtic career can be summed up as, Shite!
He eventually wandered back to become one of the boys from Brazil in the hurly burly, turmoil and financial quagmire that is the Brazilian Championship.
Dutch destroyer and Netherlands gurning champion, Jimmy Floyd Shitloadsinthebank, left us for pastures yellower when he buggered off to Charlton Not Very Athletic.
I'll concede that although it's early days in his career at the Valley, he doesn't get any benefit of the doubt from me, as he's only scored one goal and in general has been, you've guessed it. Shite!
His team are firmly deposited at the base of the Premiership after a dozen mediocre games and JFH has been a substitute on three occasions, warming that ample wide-load arse while looking at the back of the head of now deposed Charlton chump Iain Dowie. Which perversely, when I come to think of it, could be deemed as advantageous because Ian Dowie has one of the fugliest heads in football, not unlike a frowning albino bulldog chewing a wasp's nest!
Then we have Michael 'Porky' Ricketts, the man who makes Jimmy's derriere look positively pert and is the exception to the standard Boro idiom of leave and be damned in eternal hell fire for ever! He paradoxically brought eternal hell fire and brimstone with him from the Reebok, then added a few tons of molten fire and lost souls into the bargain.
Ricketts came to Boro from Bolton Wanderers after a starburst of powerful goalscoring form that pushed him to a single undeserved England cap. Across the Pennines he drove in his Ferrari 360 and put pen to paper on a very lucrative contract for Ginger Mac at the Riverside. 'Twenty goals a season, power, England regular!' were the by lines that emanated from Boro's publicity department.
Now, quite simply, shite I'm afraid just doesn't cover it, I'd have to invent a new expletive for Ricketts, like Blobnembulous!
He was so bad in the red and white Errea of der Boro that we thought he was a sleeper spy from Sunderland. Rumour has it, that he didn't even score in training and was so inept that Steve Gibson was beginning to think he'd actually signed an Aussie Rules player.
So they sent him off to the famous analyst at Adidas, Hugh Jardon, who studied his 'technique' and custom made him a new pair of boots. He returned to the Riverside with a spanking pair of size tens, in pale shite brown with three diarrhoea yellow stripes. The blood drained from Gibbo's head and he groaned audibly when he opened the box and saw these expensive new boots!
They were both left footers!
So there you have it fellow Smogs. In relation to Boro, the grass certainly is not greener on the other side. In fact in most cases it's ...........SHITE!
Enough Said,
ErimusRed.
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