Far be it for me to jump on the Boro bandwagon by dusting off my laptop and crowing about Boro making it (albeit briefly) to the top of the league, but the truth is despite enjoying my new job, I miss writing about football. Therefore boys and girls I’m getting my blog on for what will hopefully be the first of many insights, rambles and rants about the beautiful game and my beloved Boro.
And as I’ve already been soundly ribbed about it by various friends, I’m holding my hands up – Emnes is turning into Boro’s star striker! I never rated the Dutchman and was fairly vocal in expressing that view, but his stats this season speak for themselves and ‘Marvellous Marvin’ is definitely another tick in the box for Tony Mowbray’s management style.
The appointment of Tony Mowbray did not initially fill me with joy – as far as I could tell the reasons for appointing him were much the same as appointing Southgate – he was a fantastic Boro captain, just the man to lead us back to the glory days. Of course Mowbray had managerial experience on his side but still, I wasn’t convinced.
As with Emnes, I’m thrilled to be proved wrong. Mowbray has turned our boys back into a team, made us hard to beat and played to his personnel’s strengths rather than shoving them out of position and hoping for the best a la Southgate or berating them and demoralising them a la Strachan.
And he’s wonderfully understated. His response to taking Boro to the top of the Championship and ensuring we are now the only unbeaten team in our league was: “Yes, we are doing ok” There’s no getting carried away on Mogga’s watch!
I have only had the privilege of being at one of Mowbray’s managerial press conferences but he struck me as a man you could trust but one you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of – a good combination for a football manager. When asked somewhat dubiously by a reporter about the appointment of Matty Bates as captain he replied “It’s my town, anything he gets up to – anything any of them get up to and I’ll know about it!”
Still, our pre-season could be described as a disaster and as Saturday the 6th of August approached, I wasn’t looking forward to it.
Through no fault of Mowbray’s Boro are still trying to scramble back the fans and the status which through a combination of bad management, bad football and bad PR, the club have steadily lost over the last 5 years. But the fans need to come back, because it’s not the same team who let us down, its not the same boys who ran scared and were the architects of their own downfall – the 2011/12 Boro team are a different animal all together.
Sitting in the East stand watching Boro draw against Portsmouth on the opening day of the season, I was initially pleasantly surprised. We looked like a better team than I remembered and above all we looked organised – the players knew their jobs and were doing them. We conceded the seemingly inevitable injury time equaliser and threw two points away but to me there were a plethora of positives to focus on.
Then came Walsall away in the Carling Cup and the emergence of Marvin Emnes with a stunning hat-trick – trust me most Boro fans were stunned that the Dutchman had scored, let alone bagged three! But scoring has become the norm for Emnes, and winning is becoming a habit for Boro.I could write a match by match report but this blog is already too long and hopefully if you are reading this you don’t need me to tell you just how well Boro are doing this season.
If you’ll allow me to go off on a tangent here - I miss David Wheater and Andrew Taylor because they were part of the Boro team I knew best. Young local youth academy graduates who I often interviewed and got to know quite well. Wheater was a necessary sacrifice for the funds to strengthen our squad, Taylor ultimately decided his future lay elsewhere. But the summer transfer window came and went and this time we held on to our two most saleable assets – Joe Bennet and Rhys Williams.
Bennet has had a turbulent start to the season and has not always acquitted himself to the best of his ability, but he’s young, talented and gutsy and I have faith that he’ll find his way to a more consistent performance before Christmas. Williams is the kind of player that Championship clubs dream of – Premiership quality, young enough to still improve, versatile, professional and confident. He can play anywhere and will do a job wherever he is most needed. Around these two we have a sort of odds and sods collection of players coming to the end of their careers, youth academy graduates and international imports but crucially, Mowbray is getting the best out of all of them.
Seven games in we are sitting pretty in second, a point off top with 17 points and are the only side who can claim to be unbeaten in the Championship, and I can’t wait for Saturday!
