Udayan's Corner - Downing Our Sorrows || Middlesbrough F.C. news, reviews and comment

DOWNING OUR SORROWS 16-11-07
Udayan Mukherjee

With Middlesbrough perched precariously above the relegation trapdoor and unable to stop goals flying past them, it was a welcome relief to not only get a vital point at fellow strugglers Bolton, but also to keep a clean sheet.

It isn't the entertaining football that Southgate promised but two points against our fellow strugglers has stopped the rot temporarily. And there's promise of better to come.

Key players are on the road to full fitness and perhaps a full-strength Middlesbrough side can begin to claw their way to a reasonable position in the table.

The clean sheet achieved in the draw against Bolton coincided with the return of Austrian mentalist Emmanuel Pogatetz. The alpine hardman (as every edition of the Evening Gazette article labels him) came on to the pitch and immediately clattered into his old pal Kevin Davies.

While listening to the radio I allowed myself a wry smile as I remembered one of Poggy's previous enounters with the Bolton forward. This was when a heavily bleeding Pogatetz went spare. While other players tried to calm him down, the more juvenile in the crowd (myself included) egged him on, begging him to 'knack' the now scared looking Davies.

Poggy is pure Rock'n'Roll. I bet he doesn't listen to R'n'B now does he?

He may not be the most technically gifted player but he is exactly what the doctor ordered. With the return of Robert Huth and Jonathan Woodgate also imminent, we have the prospect of having a back four that is capable of keeping clean sheets and imposing themselves on games.

In an attacking sense, we will also have more to choose from with the possible returns of Mido and Julio Arca. The latter is the player who, arguably, we have missed the most.

When you are seventeenth in the table, it is vital to have fighters in the team. It is also vital that these fighters carry those who lack confidence with them. The boos that rang out against Tottenham were hopefully this season's nadir.

We need to stick together as a club and keep the recriminations to a minimum. I can fully understand people booing at games and leaving early sometimes but those that choose to do so must realise that goading players who are giving plenty of effort is counter-productive.

I realise that I should probably sit on the fence with this one but I find the culture of over excessive criticism of Middlesbrough born players by Middlesbrough fans to be very strange.

Before I go any further, I would like to point out that the specific player in question, a certain Stewart Downing, is not playing well at the moment. I don't need some doyle telling me after this article has gone out that "Downing's a fanny".

Downing is a left winger and left wingers are nearly always fannies. It's what they do. They fanny about. Two or three times a game they will beat a man and cross a great ball in. Sometimes they will score, which Downing has done three times already. They don't charge about like a lunatic and get booked every game like Lee Cattermole.

The argument that Downing doesn't beat his man often enough, however, is a much more valid one. This and the half-arsed tricks that he tries have been really annoying, especially when we know he can do better.

It is obvious, however, that Downing is a confidence player. If you constantly knock him then he will go into his shell.

We are seeing first hand that he is afraid to try anything. He constantly ambles inside with his head down. He also seems afraid to beat his man. Whether this has been coached out of him or whether he simply feels that there is no one to aim for is something that is open to debate.

Downing started the season brightly and hopefully we haven't pushed him out of the club. I am all in favour of bringing back Adam Johnson to provide competition but I also feel that those who claim that 'Downing's rubbish' will realise how wrong they are if he does decide to leave.

Maybe the return of Johnson will provide a timely boost for Downing. We could certainly do with two exciting wingers trying to out-do each other. Indeed, if Arca remains injured for much longer, the possibility of having Downing and Johnson on both wings and tucking Gary O'Neil into the centre seems tempting.

It is a sad truth that as soon as we achieve a midfield with balance and attacking intent, we lose the strikers that until last season were banging in upwards of thirty goals a season. Twelve games into this season and our three main attackers have only scored three goals between them.

It is even more galling that we have the likes of Lee Dong Gook on the bench who couldn't change a lightbulb, never mind a game.

Thankfully, the return of Mido and hopefully Julio Arca will give us players who can provide a genuine presence in the final third and a link between midfield and attack. This was something that was the basis of our fluent yet not-quite-successful football earlier in the campaign.

After the international break, Boro have Aston Villa, a team that are fast and exciting. Or at least fast and exciting compared to what they were before!

The tale of Villa really brings home the disappointment of Middlesbrough Football Club post-Eindhoven. Clubs that are now much better off than us - Aston Villa, Man City, Portsmouth for example - were not a couple of seasons ago.

Perhaps it is due to foreign investment that Boro have fallen so far behind. But that doesn't mean that this situation doesn't hurt. With any justice, we would have pushed on and become a regular European presence but mistakes in the aftermath have cost us.

We must now start to build a team of honest professionals capable of keeping us in the division. Hopefully this will be a team that will slowly improve year in year out. At the present time, however, it looks like it will take a lot to even get us out of the third tier of the Premiership.

In truth we desperately need three points. We need a large, vocal crowd shouting encouragement. We need sixteen players that look like they care about this football club and we need to put one over on Villa to pull us away from the mire.

Come On Boro

Udayan Mukherjee

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