March 2009 Archives

LABEL-loving loyalists will be delighted that Boro are to switch to shirts made by one of the game's biggest players, adidas.

For years the football fashionistas at the Riverside have agonised over the shocking faux pas of turning out in kits that the concourse cognescenti would look down on. Errea were tacky, they said. The piping was all wrong, The designs clumsy and childlike. The red too red. Or not red enough. The overlaid stitching ran left to right. How will we sign any of the metropolitan elite. I mean, who would be seen dead in THAT?

You would think we were kitted out in the pound shop and the rest were swanking around in Pysche to listen to some of the harsher critics.

BORO have trimmed adult season ticket prices by an average 5% in a bid to head off an expected collapse in crowd after a demoralising season and growing mutterings of mutiny. The cuts will apply no matter what division the club are playing in next year.

This follows a four-year price freeze making football at the Riverside next term cheaper than five years ago. The pocket money priced kids concessions remain unchanged.

All this and four extra games free too?

IT IS good to see the players throw their weight behind the Gazette's "Keep The Faith" campaign. Showing all the timing that makes his tackling such a fearsome weapon, iconic hardman Emanuel Pogatetz has admitted as the pressure mounts in the relegation battle that if Boro go down, he's out of here.

BUGGER. Holed below the waterline by a glorified Championship side with one weapon, a ballistic freak of a throw; left needing snookers after yet another predictable away day defeat in which Boro did well enough tactically and technically to edge the game and carve out enough chances to win but failed abysmally where it mattered in front on goal and then were undone by one late slip to a set-piece we all saw coming.

THE UNITY of fans and team almost fractured into unseemly sniping for a minute there but don't worry, it was just the boos talking.

For all the crunch time rallying cries and talk of sticking together through ten cup finals, when the pressure is on people will react emotionally. That was certainly the case against Portsmouth as fans voiced their dissent at a poor display - overtly and in code - and the manager responded with a post-match pop.

HOW did second best Boro get anything from that game? They were simply awful for 70 minutes. They were disjointed, nervous, ponderous, wasteful and lacked any semblance of ambition for long spells.

There was rarely any attacking intent yet at the back they looked exposed and there was an air of inevitability from very early on that high-rise hitman Peter Crouch was going to break his three month goal drought and run riot.

Yet somehow Boro got out of jail to snatch a point - and they almost had three.

WE HAVE ten games to save our status. Ten cup finals. Ten opportunities to claw our way out of the mire and towards Premier League survival.

ANY PROSPECT of a silver lining to this season of gathering storm clouds has gone.
Perhaps it is for the best. Boro were never going to win the cup. Not this year.

But going down at Everton is not like the sickening kick in the teeth of last season's spineless capitulation to Cardiff. Then, with all the big boys out, victory would have given us not just a jolly at the new Wembley but also a frightening REAL chance of winning the trophy we all dreamed of on the playground.

This time a win would have brought with it a toxic distraction.

CRASH! Well there goes the goal difference. Gutted. Taken apart by Droopy's boys. Good job they were tired and demotivated after Wembley.