SO CAPTAIN Clipboard has gone and fast learning rookie boss Gareth Southgate has asserted his ideological control over the club. That can only be a good step. It brings tactical clarity, removes the dysfunctional potential for office politics power struggles and gives the boss an opportunity to put his own men in the key positions behind the scenes.
Far from being a seismic shock, the departure of Steve McClaren's disciple in chief over "a difference in philosophy and ideas" had an air of inevitability about it. From the moment Gareth South went public with his desire to play open, attractive and attacking football and by implication attacked the entire culture of the past five years Steve Round was doomed.
Coachaholic Round was one of the key architects of McClarenism, a zealous advocate of the appliance of science that systematically removed suspect flair and individualism in favour of complex systems, team selection based on Prozone stats, dour functionality and a cautious percentage possession game. Paralyisis by analyisis.
Ofcourse, a scientific approach is not neccessarily bad. Such technical and tactical knowledge and a zest for meticulous preparation can be a wonderful asset if harnessed and if the wielder is totally committed. But Steve Round was not totally committed. From the moment his mentor left for England there had been a questionmark over his head.
He had been linked with the Hull managerial job in the Summer within weeks of McClaren's departure and then applied for the West Brom job following Bryan Robson's sacking with Southgate giving the Baggies permission to talk to him. Clearly, for all the talk of continuity and the impression given that his retention in the coaching set-up was non-negotiatiable nad possibly even the factor that scared off Martin O'Neill, something was amiss.
No one could blame Round for feeling that, despite being bigged up in the press by the powers that be and talked of as central to a new Hurworth bootroom culture, the foundations he had helped lay were starting to crumble underneath him. His co-thinker, the man who brought him to the club and shaped his position had moved on. Worse still, he, the man with more badges than a scout jamboree could muster, was not only passed over for the top job in favour of a novice but was then further demoted from assistant boss to working with the stiffs.
That is a massive snub no matter how you dress it up. In almost any workplace such a radical restructuring of the power balance would inevitably transform the personal dynamics and create the conditions that could so easily foster animosity and resentment and at the very least would demotivate the loser in the reshuffle.
For Round to accept being shunted aside at Boro could signal the beginning of the end of his career. He is supremely qualified, widely respected and is universally praised by the players and staff at the club and clearly has plenty to offer . But it is now time for Round to test himself as a manager and or carve out a new role of influence at a club where he is not tainted as the living embodiment of the discredited old regime.
That does not mean that his departure was engineered, merely that the dynamics and political landscape behind the scenes had changed so fundamentally that for him to stay would be stifling, frustrating and counter-productive. A clean break was best all round.
For Boro fans of a recriminatory nature though it presents a challenge. Now there will be no dark bespectacled panto villain presence urging caution and whispering 'keep it tight' from the shadows. Now who will there be to blame for every defeat and tactical blunder?
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