Re: FA CUP...Embarrassing Display
At least you were able to switch off!! I have been a Boro supporter for some 50 years but ...
At least you were able to switch off!! I have been a Boro supporter for some 50 years but I now live 75 miles from the Riverside and cannot attend home matches without a deal of effort and expense. However I met up with my two adult sons to attend yesterday. Gibson, Lamb and Southgate got what they had bleated for all season, a full house, what we, the paying supporters failed to get was passion from the players. Southgate tried as he always does from the touchline but he just was not getting through. Every player without exception just do not turn up yesterday, and if they have any contrition within themselves they will donate last weeks wages to a charity for the underprivileged.
Boro yesterday did not have a leader who grabbed players and hence the game by the scruff of the neck. Arca although a talented player is not a captain when the chips are down and I'm not sure Boeteng was either. Rochemback was as ineffectual as I have ever seen him and that is saying something. Alves is still not fit and possibly not really interested as yet, and can the rumours be true that he does not like to train? Mido is committed but woefully unfit still. Tuncay tries but lacks support, and when Young and O'Neil have a bad day together as they did yesterday Boro have all sorts of trouble. Schwarzer's mind was/is not on the job but maybe on his future. Only Pogatetz and Downing really seemed to be trying, but they too were below par and had no real support for crosses.
So it's all over for another season, save for a possible scrap against relegation. But Boro's best opportunity to win a major domestic trophy has gone and the circumstances of top teams taking their collective eyes of the ball may not happen again. No Europe next year of course so Boro will have difficulty attracting and keeping top players like Woodgate and Yakubu for another season.
Middlesbrough as a town is somewhat of a Cinderella, although unjustifiably so, yesterday on national television it was also made a laughing stock. Messrs Gibson & Lamb may want full houses week on week, but it is a business they are running, and if a business fails to provide for its customers, it loses them albeit probably only temporarily.
