OH NO! We're going to get battered! The fixtures are out and we haven't signed anyone and we've got a rookie boss and it is looking like a relegation struggle already. Southgate Out!
The publication of the fixtures is one of those moments when base instincts kick in and the crowd is divided into the Boro crowd's traditional glass half-empty/half-full factions. There is no current form or injury list to shape a rational picture so it comes down to disposition. The optimists will be convinced this our year for the Champions League and like the look of those opening six games while the pessimists will be digging in for the relegation battle and picking out that key date in October when Boro will get their first win.
Reading have the winning habit, will be fired up for their first ever Premiership game and there will be an incredible atmosphere with locals and neutrals all willing them on. Chelsea will come looking for revenge after last year. Pompey are a beefed up bogey side. Then Arsenal and Bolton away. Then Blackburn at home. That will be a battle. Ah, Sheffield United. We should beat them. D'oh!
Now, I'll put my hand up and say I am a pessimist. A realistic pessimist. Don't get me wrong. I revel in the undesputed fact that Boro have been doing incredibly well in recent years, have won things and been in a European final and are in an unprecedented Golden Age with the structure in place to push on - an assessment of the club's current position that admittedly puts me on the ridiculously positive end of the pessimist spectrum.
But - here's the rub - I am have constant nagging doubts about whether we can make it permanent and am haunted by the fear that we are playing above our station, that sooner rather than later Boro will be dragged back down by the weight of history and by a kind of football gravity. What goes up must come down, that's science.
The fact is for a club like Boro, no matter how many exciting cup runs you go on, you are just one bad season away from going down. Look back to January. No one can seriously say the club weren't in real danger. If Petr Cech had saved that weak shot for the spawny first goal against Chelsea then we could be looking at whole different universe.
That is what scares me, that we were so close. That and the fear that the luck will run out. Since the dam burst we've enjoyed 128 years worth of fortune at Cardiff and along the road to Eindhoven. But what if it dries up? A colleague argued today that Steve McClaren was the jammiest man in football and that his good fortune in the face of all logic was the single most important thing in propelling Boro to Carling Cup and European glory. "But what if Southgate just isn't lucky at all?" he asked. And we shuddered at the prospect.
Of course none of this is scientific. Gareth ticks all the right boxes, Gibbo's judgement has generally been proved right and he thinks the Gate is a future England boss. But there are no guarantees. And to me those look like tough opening fixtures.
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