After dropping two points against Portsmouth, Stoke v Boro was the must win match to end all must win matches. And we lost it.
Gary O'Neil was back as was Justin Hoyte but Jeremie Aliadiere failed a late fitness test. Hoyte, when fit has been one of our most consistent players, not to mention the genuine pace and ability to surge forward which he possesses but he was nonetheless relegated to the bench.
Arca was finally dropped, far too late in the season but at least Southgate did it eventually.
With our dreadful away record and Stoke's excellent home record we needed a miracle. In the end the only miracle was that both sides ended with eleven players.
We weren't awful but we weren't good enough. Tuncay hit every part of the goal apart from the back of the net, James Beattie seemed to have misplaced his shooting boots for Stoke and Boro's best shot on target came from a defender, Tony McMahon.
And then came the sucker punch. Eight Boro boys couldn't mark five Stoke players and Ryan Shawcross headed home. Game over.
There was a small section of Boro fans who, until Shawcross scored had been holding on, keeping the faith, enjoying denial and hoping Boro would turn it around and stay up.
I think we have now all accepted that is not going to happen.
We can't score, we fail in defending basic set pieces, we slow the game down despite being better when we up the tempo. We have no belief, very little passion, the quality of our general play is rarely Premier League standard, the manager is at a loss, the players don't respect him and the Chairman is moving further and further into the background.
Why on earth did we think we had a shot at survival?
It is a shame that we will go down with West Brom, taking former Boro boys James Morrison, Jonathan Greening and Tony Mowbray with us but the only question for me now is who else is coming with us?..
First published on www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/fanzone - Mar 09
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