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THE ROCKLIFFE
FILES - SOUNDING ABOUT DOWNING 6-1-09
Toby Higgins
Having made his future at the club untenable in the way that seemingly only young sportsmen can, the chances of Stewart Downing ever playing for Middlesbrough again are remote.
With one of the most important Tees-Wear derbies in years just days away, fans could be forgiven for suggesting what will go on this week will affect the outcome on Saturday.
Downing has, for some reason, never quite been fully accepted as the ‘local lad done good’. Unlike Cattermole, Wheater and Bates, Downing’s natural talent and flair far surpasses his love for a hard-hitting tackle. Crossing and dribbling, the modern, fancy, scary, ‘London based’ talents are not enough for a small group of Teesside Neanderthals who rate a player on how far he can kick it and how hard he is. To those people, Downing is everything that is wrong with the modern game.
With every bad performance, every ducked tackle, every good game for England, and every media invoked rumour about a transfer taken as a personal attack on the club, fans' revulsion towards Downing stems for the mythical belief that the winger considers himself ‘too good’ to play for this club.
That was until this week when, seven years after making his Boro debut, Pallister Park born Downing almost inevitably submitted a written transfer request, stating that the club’s ambitions were no longer in alignment with his own and that he needed to move on.
Finally, Downing has provided those fans with live ammo for their arsenal and he can fully expect to be pelted with boos, jeers and abuse. Sadly, they don’t see a young Boro lad who has never done anything but work tirelessly for the club. They don't appreciate that he’s been here long enough to have wracked up over 180 first team appearances and won twenty-one full England caps,.
This tells you that Downing isn't a primadona looking to jump ship at the first sign of rough waters. If that was true, Downing would have been in Tottenham’s lifeboat long before now. Downing is as much ‘one of our own’ as the rest.
It’s Downing’s words and reasons, rather than his actions, which are more concerning.
This is not the last act of a stroppy young professional who has seen the chance to make a few extra quid a week and live it up in this country’s capital city. Downing is not a man lead by greed or ego.
His claim that the club mislead him about future signings and investment when he signed a new contract eleven months ago, coupled with another disappointing League campaign, is cause for concern because he’s absolutely right.
Downing was an unused sub in the Carling Cup Final in 2004 and has been a key player ever since, particularly in the years that followed and the run which lead to the UEFA Cup Final in 2006.
He’s seen the likes of Zenden, Mendieta, Juninho, Viduka, Woodgate, Yakubu and Hasselbaink come and go as the club have rolled with some of the big boys at the business end of some of the biggest competitions in football. Through all this, Downing has stayed, patiently, as the rest abandoned the club in search of more money and success at bigger clubs.
Looking around the current dressing room when compared to the one in Eindhoven must be a demoralising sight. The lack of character in a dressing room which apparently shares no social relationships amongst its members, coupled with a drop in quality of players and manager is exactly the kind of thing that would drive anybody to seek new employment – particularly if you had been assured that it wouldn’t be this way when you were tied down to a long term contract.
Southgate is no McClaren. Alves is no Viduka. Arca is no Boateng. Riggott is no Woodgate and Poggy, no Queuedrue. Downing is one of only four players left from the eighteen man squad in Eindhoven (Riggott, Bates and Jones being the others) and he must be disillusioned with the backward progress the club has made since that historic day.
Like many young fans, Downing doesn’t remember the old days at Ayresome – he was only eleven when the club moved to the Riverside. The cold winter’s nights, scrapping for points at home to Port Vale with an attendance of 10,000 are something Downing doesn’t remember because he wasn’t there. The club, unlike a lot of its fans and some key members of its management, have moved on.
The younger generation of fans and players care more about where this club is going than where it has been and the defeatist attitude offered by many of the older generation of fans soon becomes grating. This same negative, defeatist approach was used by Steve Gibson after Eindhoven.
Downing, like so many others, must have looked on in semi-horror when negotiations with Martin O’Neill broke down over something as trivial as him wanting to bring in his own coaching team (the sign of any good manager, it should be added) and Southgate was appointed. A glance towards Villa two and a half years on tells a depressing story of missed opportunities and regret. We should have been consolidating our position as one of this country’s best teams instead of appointing rookie managers and signing Premier League reserves.
Gibson’s dream of Boro having a young, local team with an English manager is getting in the way of achieving genuine footballing success. Downing knows it and seems to have decided that if this club isn’t going to move with the times, then he will. It’s hard to see how he can be blamed.
The Downing arguments will rumble for weeks, maybe even months. Gibson is either too proud, or stubborn, to admit that he makes mistakes and there can be little doubt that by the time Gibson has finished with it, Downing’s reputation and credibility amongst those on Teesside will be the same as that of Zenden, Viduka, McClaren and Maccarone. This is a tremendous shame, given that Downing has never held this club to ransom in the same way that many others have done over the years.
So, while we prepare for a long battle against the drop, Downing and Spurs, and O’Neill and Villa, can look forward to the second half of the season filled with European football and genuine Cup winning possibilities.
How different things should have been.
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