Boro pose for their Pre-Match Photo
Middlesbrough have had an average kind of season when compared with their expectations at the start of the season and currently sit 4 points off the playoffs with 2 games left. By the time our game kicks off (yes, we’re on TV again) then they may well know that they have nothing to play for as opposed to next to nothing. Whatever the other results today then this will be a difficult game against a side who will try to play football as that is Tony Mowbray’s way. Mowbray is a manager who falls squarely in the ‘decent bloke’ category of manager and not in the Fat Sam-Warnock-Poyet category. I expect that Boro were expecting to do better and indeed at Christmas they were briefly in second place but poor home form and recently, poor form everywhere has almost certainly done for them as far as going up this year is concerned.
It has surprised me this week that the Saints players have obviously been talking about the alleged TV curse in that there is a generally held opinion that Saints + TV = Shite and if our results in televised games were replicated over a season, I expect we’d be in League 2. No negative thoughts here as Nigel would say... the fact that it’s on TV is completely irrelevant. Other Saints news this week is that Lee Barnard has finally been cleared of any wrongdoing in the infamous White House incident of 18 months ago. The court case had a longer lifespan that the pub which has now closed down and maybe Barney will wrestle one of the three substitute berths off of the defenders.
The 3pm games that were interesting saw Reading have Jason Roberts sent off and eventually draw 2-2 at home to Crystal Palace which tantalisingly opened up the possibility of winning the league again. Personally, I can’t believe that Reading didn’t somehow score a winning goal as that’s the way they roll. The way the Skates roll is to follow a decent performance with a pathetic one and they lost 2-1 at home to a Derby team with nothing to play for which relegated them, regardless of the fact that Bristol City got the result they needed to condemn the fish fiddlers anyway. Cue moaning about the 10 points, the Fit and Proper Test and blah blah fucking blah. Bye……
More relevant was that fact that Blackpool and Birmingham both won to confirm their playoff places but Cardiff only drew which means that Middlesbrough still had a shout of taking the last playoff place despite a run of one win in their last 10 which is quite frankly, shit.
So, sat in the pub and the team is announced and it’s the same as last week but the bench has thankfully changed. On the face of it, it’s better as Bart is on there along with the returning Morgan and Guly. There are still two defenders with Martin and Harding – surely de Ridder, Puncheon, Falque or Barnard would have been a better bet. Hang on, so in fact it’s even more defensive than the last game with de Ridder being replaced with a defensive midfielder and Richardson with a keeper.
Middlesbrough’s side looks decent on paper with two forwards with Saints connections in ex-Saints-trainee-Billy-Big-Bollocks-good-in-Scotland-but-shit-everywhere-else Scott McDonald and the player who caused a Daily Echo meltdown earlier in the season, Southampton born Lukas Jutkiewicz. Also they have a couple of decent midfielders in Barry Robson and Nicky Bailey.
The cameras pan around the fans and there are many Saints fans in celebration mode, wigs and hats and the like. There’s a part of me saying “ok it’s the last away game of the season so fair enough” and there’s another part saying “you look like a prick and let’s win the fucking game first”. Away we go and immediately we have a throw on right wing where Chappers feeds it back to Jose who swings the cross over in time honoured fashion. Two Boro defenders run into eachother and it drops to Lallana who heads it through to Sir Rickie. He looks like his first touch has taken it too far but he squares it and Billy Sharp does what he does. 46 seconds and 1-0, get the fuck in there and we all go nuts. Billy runs straight to the camera pointing to his ‘LV’ tattoo. I happen to know due to a Soccer AM interview with Billy and James Beattie, that this stands for ‘Las Vegas’ which I’m guessing is on the agenda for the players if we get promoted. Before Billy got fitter it could have stood for ‘Luncheon Voucher’.
Boro tear back into us and in no way are going to lie down. Firstly, Bailey fires one over the bar before Haroun gets played in behind Fox and feeds in a decent low cross which Jose expertly deals with. It’s mainly Boro for the next 20 minutes really but without any shots on target as Robson fires narrowly over twice.
Then a curious incident as we play the ball up the left and Sir Rickie is away and the ball is rolling along the line. It doesn’t go out and he cuts in and smashes it past Steele. In fairness, Steele has seen that the lino is flagging and hasn’t tried to save it but it definitely has not gone out so it’s abysmal officiating. How difficult is it to look along a line and stick your flag up if the whole of the ball is over the whole of the line?
Saints need to get hold of the ball and pass it about which they then do and there is a lovely passage of play where we keep it for about 40 passes and it’s unfortunate that the player ultimately on the end of it was Chappers who was off balance as he lashed a left footed effort over the bar. Chappers is nearly in again a few minutes later but is denied by a desperate tackle which sees us win one of an ever increasing number of corners.
Boro are being overrun and resort to hacking players down to get a foothold which results in a booking for Bailey for cynically hacking down Lallana as he sped away from him in midfield. We come close from the resulting free kick as Foxy curls it left footed, just over the angle of post and bar. As an aside, Bailey has the kind of face you would never tire of punching.
As half time approached we were comfortable enough without really dominating but out of nowhere Boro equalized when a hopeful lob into the box was headed away by Big Jos but Bailey met it on the volley and a deflection off of Chappers took it past Superkelv and right into the corner. He’s hit it well enough to be fair but the deflection turns it into a goal. So, 1-1 from Boro’s first shot on target. Having seen it again, Jos’s header wasn’t good enough and should have been headed out to the wing, rather than the middle.
We’re rattled by the goal and immediately, Robson plays in Jutkiewicz who finishes well as the Daily Echo wanks itself into a frenzy but he’s flagged offside when basically, he wasn’t or at least, it didn’t look like it to me.
Half time is a time for refilling your glasses, emptying your bladder and wondering if the pundits on Sky have been watching the same game as I have. Boro have scored and had one disallowed in the last minute so naturally, they’ve been the better side all game which of course they have, if you have the memory span of a goldfish. No matter though as whatever has been said by Nigel at half time has clearly worked and we are on fire at the start of the second half and Boro are still taking advantage of the ridiculously lenient referee by fouling at every opportunity. We’re getting free kicks though and Sir Rickie flashes a 30 yarder just wide of the post.
Another passage of passing play sees us over on the left and sees Corky, Deano and Adam playing triangles. Corky plays the ball, I went for a round of drinks, got served, counted my change, handed the beers out and then Hines arrived and wellied Corky up in the air. I have seen many referees send a player off for a tackle like this on it’s own but we got the predictable yellow card brandished.
We’re nearly back in front on 52 minutes as the dominance continues and Sir Rickie tees up Sharp on the edge of the box but his blast just fades away over the bar. Then, three minutes later came the talking point of all talking points. Boro are playing a high defensive line, I assume because we haven’t got much pace up top but Lallana provides a burst and gets through and in behind, running at goal. He gets to the edge of the box and Hines trashes him from behind. The ref gives the foul and all the Boro players surround the ref cos they know Hines is going off. There is a slight question mark on a straight red because the left back is coming across but he’s not there yet. Either way it shouldn’t matter as it’s a definite yellow card at least. But it does. Inexplicably, the wanker in the black doesn’t card him. Absolutely fucking unreal. So, we go from having a clear goalscoring opportunity to having a free kick with 11 players in front of it, not to mention the 35 minutes we would have had against 10 men. To further add to the sense on injustice, Sir Rickie smashes the free kick wide.
The next 20 minutes are relatively quiet. The incident and the non-sending off has quietened us down a bit and disrupted our flow and then comes a flurry of substitutions. I remember that Scott McDonald was playing as he trudges off and Robson also goes. For us, Chappers has picked up a hamstring injury whilst trying to reach a ball before it ran out and is replaced by Guly. The camera pans to Andy Crosby giving instructions to the incoming sub. Hopefully it as something like “it’s actually really warm out there and it’s still 2011, when you were decent, before your form went to shit”.
Fifteen minutes to go and a ball is floated in Jutkiewicz who shoves Fonte who responds by briefly grabbing his arm before letting go which was pointless as the ball was going over them both and through to Butters. Free kick to Boro 25 yards out and a booking for Jose, proving that holding someones arm for a second warrants the same punishment as hoofing someone up in the air with the latest of late tackles and then bringing someone down from behind when they are clean through on goal. Once the ref has missed the initial shove by Jutkiewicz, fair enough Fonte has pulled him and so it is a free kick. As in the first incident, to add insult to injury, Zemmama clips a lovely shot over the wall and in for 2-1. To be fair, it a lovely strike and the only way we could have prevented it was to have a player on the line. Superkelv was covering the other side so once Zemmama got it up and down it was always going in.
We look shellshocked top be honest though Guly does manage a rasping drive from 25 yards which Steele tips over the bar which of course, is a goal kick. A quick look at what remains on the bench sees a defensive midfielder and two defenders and so Morgan comes on for Butters, thus replacing our best crosser of the ball from the right wing and we predictably do sod all for the rest of the game which Boro manage to play out in relative comfort.
As the game ends and we get a shot of Hines celebrating on the pitch that he should have vacated 35 minutes earlier, we then get another shot of some middle-aged prick in a clown outfit, crying – I know you’re a fellow Saints fan mate but how embarrassing is that, not least because it’s still in our own hands no matter what happens.
I thought that tactically we got it a bit wrong today. Boro set up with a midfield diamond and maybe we should have done the same as we had the players on the pitch to do this. Adam Lallana said in his post match interview that Bailey was giving us problem from the base of the diamond so maybe we should have pushed a man onto him. Having said that though, we did create chances for all but for the last half hour when we were poor. Again I repeat my moan about the bench as we had one attacking player on there and we had to use him in midfield when Chappers went off. I can’t help but feel that Steeeeeve would have been useful today with Boro playing such a high defensive line.
Like the Skates game and the Reading game, it seem that every on-target shot has ended up in our net. I’d say a draw would have been a fair result today with 11v 11 but it shouldn’t have been 11v11 and I hope the ref gets called to account for what was basically a huge case of bottling it. Having said that, we could have controlled the game a bit better than we did and I felt our problems were really amplified when Chappers went off. In hindsight (again) maybe we’d have been better bringing on Morgan and moving Corky to the right, rather than using Guly and could have kept him back for later.
As Nigel correctly pointed out though, it’s all in our hands still and a win against already relegated Coventry at home next Saturday, will put us into the Premier League. He also mentioned the ref and the turning point and fair enough. Hines would have been sent off for both his offences by some referees but only got one yellow today, complete madness. Another point is that they had one free kick and scored whereas we had about 5 and missed them all with none being on target. We get given a lot of free kicks around the box and maybe we need to be a bit more clinical with them. Whisper it quietly but I don’t think Sir Rickie has scored from one this season.
Moving on….Fat Sam has a game on Monday away at Leicester who have nothing to play for but will still provide stern opposition. Leicester avoiding defeat will also put us up and if they do, Nigel Pearson will write another chapter in his SFC history. If he fails then we’re in for a nerve shredding afternoon next Saturday. As for the people who say we'd rather clinch it ourselves.... words fail me.
I can see it now…. Leicester 1 West Ham 2, 93rd minute, penalty to Leicester, David Ex-Skate total wanker Nugent to take it…
1 game left, 3 points needed, maybe 1 or maybe none.
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C'mon Leicester.....
PS - Reading have won the Championship, well done. Right now I don't care.
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