Boro beat Aston Villa 2-1, secured three points, moved up the table and preserved their manager's away record against his old team. But all anyone can talk about is Alves. Or more specifically, Alves' miss.
Yes it was a bad miss, and his second wasted opportunity of the match but was it really 'the miss of the season' as it was immediately dubbed by the pundits? Well no, but it was precisely the kind of chance that you would expect him to score.
And expectations matter.
Tuncay and Aliadiere both missed some absolute sitters last season, in fact for a while they both looked like making a career out of it!
The difference is that they both bring so much else to the team and Alves, well, doesn't.
That and the small matter of the £12.5 million we shelled out for him.
I understand that relatively speaking Boro's record fee is not a lot of money for a Premiership striker, but when you consider we snapped Aliadiere up for an intial fee of just £2 million, or that, incredibly, Tuncay came to us on a free transfer, it starts to look like a very risky move for Southgate to bring the Brazilian to the Boro and one that, right now, is not paying off.
We have heard many times that Alves is a proven goal scorer and is not expected to really get involved in general play. He will pop up and score after being practically invisible all game. The problem is that right now he isn't even doing that.
To me Boro are still a team where everybody needs to pitch in to get the job done and we simply cannot afford to carry a passenger for ninety minutes on the strength that he may or may not pop up and bang in a free-kick.
Fans of the Brazilian striker claim that he is not getting the service he needs. But if that is true then he is in the wrong team.
Boro are a young, pacy attacking side this season and he has had the service. From Stewart Downing, Gary O' Neil, Digard, Aliadiere and Tuncay, he has had the service and he has had the chances.
A man who is now taking his chance with both hands is the aforementioned Tuncay.
The Turkish forward has come back better than ever and with renewed desire. He wants every ball, he craves goals, he has found his shooting boots and, offside flags permitting, he looks like he has only just started.
There also looks like there could be some stunning goals in Digard a little further down the line and Downing is finding his form again. Aliadiere is never going to get ten goals a season but he might just create twenty and when he does score it is magic.
We have the makings of a very good team here but I'm not sure there's room for Alves in it.
We won't get anyway near what we paid for him if Southgate decides to sell Alves come January, and with Mido's increasingly dubious injury 'troubles' we may have to stick with what we have got.
If Gibson finds some cash down the back of his sofa, Southgate will most likely spend it on a striker.
Turnbull has made the keeper's jersey his and the midfield has suddenly metamorphosed into something resembling a threat.
But we don't need to panic buy.
Boro are in the top ten and looking like we have earned our place there. We take on Everton this weekend and maybe Alves will regain his killer instinct, start banging goals in like there's no tomorrow and make me eat my words. I sincerely hope he does but it is good to see that Boro, and Tuncay in particular, have stopped relying on our record signing to win us games.
First published on www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/sport/fanzone - Nov 08
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