THE AWAY END
COVENTRY CITY v MIDDLESBROUGH
John Powls, 28 Sep 2009
The Build Up To The Game
The websites this week were, predictably, dominated by the fall-out from the debacle against The Baggies that re-opened unhealed wounds from last season.
Disbelief and 'didn't see it coming' shock soon gave way to 'knew this would happen as soon as Boro played anyone decent', righteous anger, blame, and calls for accountability - if not retribution.
These were supported by threats or promises to withdraw custom or active support until certain heads - well, Gareth Southgate's - rolled.
Column Continues Below...
Even the Uber-Foamies struggled to come up with anything positive until they came up with 'The Blip'. This was the theory that Boro had made a great start, they were still third and that you always get odd results, even in the most successful seasons.
The theory required you to ignore the inconvenient contra-indications, like the results and performances against other likely top six challengers like The Blades and Bristol City, and the results any time Gary O'Neil hasn't played.
The Gazette and MFC websites leapt in with evidence of 'The Blip' in promotion seasons past and came up with a number of examples that would have seemed like disasters at the time but were followed up with good runs of results and ultimate success. Unfortunately for the proponents of this argument, 'Blips' of the past have all been away from home and never by five clear goals to a close rival.
The only thing that brought some unity of view from all sources was that Boro had to show immediate 'bouncebackability' at The Ricoh Arena, with the outcome being just as much about The Reds' hearts and heads as about what Coventry would do.
In the melee over the result and performance, the debuts of loan signings St. Ledger and Folan went almost unnoticed. Phil and I believed the latter had more reason to be pleased about that. We looked forward to running the rule over them at this game.
There was also some debate about the size of the Riverside home following for the West Brom clash. It continued to indicate that the Teesside public are not enamoured with a poor Championship - let alone Boro's performance in it.
The home crowd is beginning to get pealed back to the diehard core but The Away End has continued to thrive. But we've always been diehard!
Possibly provoked by this, Gibbo launched into another midweek 'blind faith' campaign. He referred to David Wheater as a 'Sacred Cow' - I bet the Redcar Rock loved that but his more sarcastic dressing room colleagues would have loved it more!
The whole feel that the Chairman seemed to be aiming for with his repeated rhetoric was the Dias-Boro being Gibbo-ed - like being Tango-ed, only redder!
Coventry's stadium is a neat new facility, part of the now usual ring road shopping centre chic movement. Still, you can get car park gristleburger with cheese and onion!
Boro have certainly seemed to have some latent 'Home-o-phobic' tendencies so, possibly, it might have suited them better to try to bounce back in front of a healthily sized Away End in a Ricoh Arena that has been difficult for Coventry to fill and that was only sparsely populated with home fans for this one.
The Game
Due to the delights of road works, traffic and some bamboozling instructions about the location of the Park & Ride on the Ricoh Arena website, Phil and I arrived in The Away End just as the teams took to the field. The Boro players came to The Away End and booted signed footballs into the Boro fans.
With an instinctive reversion to the Willie Whigham style goalkeeping of my youth, I caught one with the assistance of a misfield by a chap up the row. A nice momento although, as ever, it's difficult to make out the provenance of any of the signatures!
Cookie Coleman's Coventry had lost out by the odd goal in five at Preston last Saturday, having beaten The Blades in the game before.
Their season had got off steadily, especially at home, and they have had a reasonably settled side, with their front pairing of Clinton Morrison and Leon Best working well.
Coleman made only one change at full-back - forced through injury.
Various newspapers had headlined pieces about the Boro squad being strengthened by supposedly better news from Crockliffe with 'selection headaches' for Gate.
Phil had opined that this wasn't a surprise because the Boro squad had often given him a headache - usually from banging his head on the wall in frustration - and pains elsewhere in his anatomy in the case of some individuals!
As it turned out, Digard and Pogi hadn't even travelled and Mr. "I won't make a change just because of one game" made three changes in the back five alone. And the two who stayed, Wheats and Ledge, had only one game together under their belts - and that was a 5-0 defeat.
Can you wonder then - even in the first half - how the Boro defence played like they hadn't seen one another before?
The Reds started quickly, kicking towards The Away End to give the Sky Blues' goalie a problem with the sun in the second half. Only a smart save from Keiren Westwood stopped the lively Emnes opening the scoring in the first couple of minutes.
The returning Gary O'Neil - notionally on the right side of midfield but actually bossing the game right across the park - was head and shoulders the best player on show.
His prompting and passing, and the pace and movement of Emnes, Aliadiere and Johnno turned the sluggish Coventry defence time after time but, as the break approached, it began to look as though The Reds' superiority wouldn't be marked on the scoreboard.
But Boro's two best moments of the game were about to happen. Firstly, Sean St. Ledger produced a prodigious leap to head in off the underside of the bar from a Johnno corner.
Then, with the Midlanders still reeling, Boro's best passing move of the game freed Gary O'Neil to drop a dinked cross into the 'zone of uncertainty'. A desperate clearance fell to Rhys Williams, who forced the ball in off the despairing Westwood.
But even as our E-I-Os rang around the "shall we sing a song for you?" Ricoh - which was quieter throughout the game than The Riverside is on a bad day - the seeds of disasters to come had already been sown by the Boro manager with his selections.
And he was about to compound the situation with his 'Midas in reverse' half-time team talk and his substitutions.
It turned out - if you believe what he said in post-match interviews - that he said what we were all saying in the Jewson Stand; the next goal is vital, as it always is at two nil.
This was particularly the case with Boro, and especially with a Reds defence that was full of strangers.
As normal, Mr. Southgate's word was anything but law with his team.
In the Coventry dressing room, his mate Cookie had a different effect. He'd clearly launched a verbal Exocet that had found its target and supported that with two substitutions that changed his team's game - a skill that has always totally eluded the Boro boss.
The Teessiders had early chances to make the game safer - if not safe - including a Johnno effort that was cleared off the line with Westwood beaten. Boro should have been out of sight and any fantasy the home following at the Ricoh Arena had about a comeback labelled 'sky blue thinking'.
But, instead, with Gary O'Neil unaccountably fading, the predictable, utterly recognisable and inexorable 'retreat to defeat' began. Boro's dugout, as usual, were powerless to stop it and didn't look as though they were trying to.
It still took until seventy-eight for Coventry's front two, who had started this season well, to capitalise on Boro's abject surrender.
There were claims of handball as Clinton Morrison turned on a feed from Leon Best only a couple of yards out and netted past the hapless Brad Jones.
Boro were then effectively down to ten men as Hoyte pulled up with no other player nearby. All the subs had been used but it still took five minutes for the brains in the Boro dugout to work out that leaving him to hobble at right-back wasn't sensible and that Williams should replace him. The rest of the team were, by then, treading treacle.
Boro were conceding too many free-kicks and by now Best and Morrison were winning everything in the air around Boro's box. The Away End - including me - were getting hoarse from screaming at Boro's players to get a grip and push up rather than retreat into the box. It went mostly unheeded.
On a rare break, Lita was pulled back by Wright when he would have been clean through. Lots of The Away End wanted a 'red' but it was forty yards from goal and very difficult for the ref - who had a poor officiating display throughout - to have judged it 'denying a goalscoring opportunity'. 'Yellow' it was.
Deep into the four minutes of injury time, Lita produced a piece of stupid indiscipline. When the ball was out of play, near the Coventry by-line, he hoofed it into the crowd, earning himself a booking and Coventry more time.
Then - surprise, surprise - Arca, caught in midfield, conceded yet another free kick. Although the original set piece was defended, Boro were still penned in and Ward crossed into The Teessiders' box. Coventry's Best was to be saved for last.
It would be easier to list those who didn't have a chance to clear than those who did - but failed.
Leon Best, unmarked at the back post, didn't need a second invitation to equalise, although he must have been surprised that the ball actually reached him through the crowd.
He and Morrison will no doubt enjoy meeting up with Ledge the next time the Ireland squad get together.
Boro were fortunate that Coventry didn't take one of their earlier chances to equalise because the likelihood was that they would have lost the game. Shocked, disappointed and, frankly, furious Away Enders fumed and faced a frustrated journey home off the back of a draw that felt like a defeat.
Later
Post-match, the Dias-Boro recognised all the old problems.
No organisation; no fitness - the whole team were shot by seventy-five minutes; no leader on the pitch; no tactical nous; indiscipline; fragile confidence; only played one half; pathetic use of substitutes.
Add to those;
1) Conceding a winning position, the initiative and territory.
2) Opening the door to the inevitability of the slow motion disaster that was evident to everyone in the ground, except those in Boro shirts or in the dugout and
3) Conceding with the last kick of the game and throwing two points away.
Mr. Southgate said in the aftermath, "Normally, getting a point at Coventry wouldn't be a bad result, but not when you were two up. The feeling in the dressing room was worse than last weekend because we had three points in our grasp and we threw them away - that's difficult to take."
If he thought it was difficult to take in the dressing room, he should have been in the Jewson Stand at the Ricoh or across the Dias-Boro. He may find how difficult when he emerges from the tunnel at The Riverside on Tuesday when Boro face Big Nige's Leicester. The size of the home following for that one will be interesting.
On the BBC Football League show, Steve Claridge offered two accurate comments on Boro's 'draw that felt like a defeat'.
Firstly, "If Boro have serious intentions of getting promotion, they can't give away points like that" and "Since Robert Huth left, Boro haven't kept a single clean sheet".
There was some small comfort in The Baggies doing a 'believing your own publicity' and losing at home but salt was rubbed into the Boro fans' wounds with yet another Skunks away win that extended their lead at the top and Preston doing the same at Leicester and overtaking The Reds for third spot.
The Away End will return after the (still without a home win!) Reading game on 3 October.
adam scott, September 28, 2009 at 5:36 pm I’d like to know if any other Boro supporters are getting increasingly worried about our lack of ability to last a full 90 minutes. During pre season preparations we have consistently been told by Gareth Southgate that his Boro sides are going to be fit and strong and out last the opposition, yet time and time again we concede goals in the last ten minutes to throw away valuable points. During the 07/08 season we conceded 8 goals in the final ten minutes of games costing us a total of 7 points. During the 08/09 season we conceded 14 goals in the last 10 minutes of games costing us a total of 13 points and ultimately our place in the Premier league. This season we have already conceded 5 goals in the last ten minutes of the game costing us 3 valuable points. If this trend continues there is the stark possibility that we will miss out on a place in the play offs never mind a place in the automatic promotion spots. I would have thought that top class defenders like Gareth Southgate and Colin Cooper would be able to instil the importance of concentrating until the end of the 90 minutes. If they can’t are they the right team for the job at hand????
