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THE MEDIA
AND THE BORO - AUGUST 2008
Craig McLeod
I must admit that whilst writing this column I
got a shock.
This article is supposed to be about how biased the media can
be against Middlesbrough FC (and in the case of one Andy Gray,
the North East in general).
So I was shocked to find that Mark Lawrenson, whilst making
his weekly predictions on the BBC Sport website, wrote,
"I like Middlesbrough" and that he had us down to beat Stoke
2-0.
This, as some of you may be able to tell, threw me into a state
of what you might call writing paralysis.
But then I thought, maybe Lawro has just been playing hard to
get with us Boro fans. Perhaps he has been pretending to hate
us for years just to make the admission that he loves us that
much sweeter.
Well he had me fooled. Last week on Match of the Day,
when discussing Tuncay's astonishing turn on Carragher with
Alan Hansen, Lawro did not lavish praise on the Turkish magician
but instead praised Carragher for remaining unfazed by the embarrassment
and then going on "to score".
Then, when discussing Gerrard's late act of blatant theft, one
of them described Gerrard as being worth every penny he was
paid because of his performance and for goals like that.
This was contrary to what Matt Le Tissier had told Soccer
Saturday earlier in the afternoon. He had said that it
was the worst performance he had ever seen from Gerrard in a
Liverpool shirt. This view was backed up by the Sunday Times,
which reported that for the most part, Gerrard had played like
he was in an England shirt. I am sure no explanation is needed
there as it was after the latest England debacle.
Lawro's sudden U-turn aside, the attitude of the MotD
presenters to all but ignore Boro's achievements and heap praise
on the big teams is not just confined to the corridors of the
BBC.
Days before the season started, the panellists for Sky's Soccer
Saturday were asked to do season previews. Refreshingly,
not one of them said we were in for a relegation battle this
year (to be frank, not one of them mentioned us at all apart
from Kammy who had Alves down as the one to watch this season).
An interesting point is that pretty much all of them had Spurs
down to finish fifth.
On the opening day of the season, we turned in a mightily impressive
performance against said Spurs. Indeed, it was so impressive
that we had to shoot at our own keeper before they got on the
scoresheet. So surely all the post-match plaudits went to the
Boro then?
Not a chance. Matt Le Tissier, who inexplicably gets given the
Boro games all the time, described the performance as "toothless"
by Spurs and claimed that more experienced teams would easily
carve Boro up at the back.
A week on and Liverpool struggled to break us down. We silenced
the Anfield crowd, deservedly took the lead and then Carragher
got a lucky break (two, if you count Tuncay not going to ground
after his turn as so many other foreign stars would have done).
Le Tissier, once again given the Boro game, gets excited when
Liverpool score and is visibly delighted when they grab the
winner.
So what has he got to say this time? "Gareth Southgate will
be beside himself that Middlesbrough have not got at least a
point out of that today." Fair enough, at last some sense out
of the man.
Alas, that is all us Boro fans get. Le Tissier goes on to say
how Liverpool are winning ugly and have a chance at the title
if they hit top gear soon. But at least he has given us the
odd compliment.
I could sit here and write page after page about how we get
treated unfairly.
When we beat a big team, we do not win the game, they lost it.
When we lose to a smaller team, we are in trouble because we
are rubbish. We should never be in the league, we brought Steve
McClaren upon this country, etc, etc.
Howeber, instead I will finish this article with three other
things that really got to me in August.
1) Andy Gray's season preview for Sky Sports.
Under the heading 'Relegation Battlers', friend-of-the-North
Gray said that the three who came up will struggle.
He was unsure about Fulham, Bolton and Wigan, but he did state
that Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland "need to prove
to their supporters that they are capable of producing the goods".
Apparently, he does not think that "...anyone in the North East
can look at the beginning of the season and say they are going
to have a great campaign. There is work to be done and a lot
of reputations to be played to."
2) David Gold having a crack at Boro. Let's be honest, he was
having a go at us for essentially being better than Birmingham.
But why pick Boro? Of all the teams that have been in this division
and consistently finished mid-table, as Keith Lamb pointed out,
we have probably had the most success.
I guess it must be easy to pick on a team from a town that some
crappy Channel Four show voted the worst place to live in Britain.
For those of you that have lived anywhere else in the country,
I am sure we all agree that the conclusion of that show was,
in fact, bollocks.
3) The Daily Mail's write up of our 5-1 drubbing of
Yeovil.
It is not the most popular paper in the world but it is the
one I happened to pick up to read the review of what was an
impressive display against what most of the media was calling
"a potential banana skin".
So how did the Daily Mail treat the game? The same
way it treats everything else - it blamed it on the foreigners.
Completely ignoring the fact that we had five English players
on at the beginning of the game and then seven English and one
Welsh player on by the end, the Daily Mail laid into
us for the first few paragraphs before finally admitting that
we played well.
I am sure that over the next month I will have plenty more to
write about and if Lawro keeps this charm offensive up, this
column might be an altogether happier one.
However, I am sure it will not last long. We play Chelsea in
October and just as I am sure Andy Gray will be commentating
on it, I am just as sure Lawro will be drooling over our more
glamorous London counterparts.
However, for now I will just settle for quietly getting on with
what we are doing - playing some bloody good football.
Until next time
BACK TO THE MEDIA AND THE BORO INDEX
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