HAS A BORO player ever made the PFA team of the year? Has one even come close to breaking into the big club magic circle? Has one even deserved to? Ever?
The annual glamour boys' mutual back-slapping beano produced a list of the usual suspects that was predictable and flawed with an unscientific bias towards using the league table as a guide. Like giving the Manager of the Year award to the boss who starts with best players and the most money and merely meets his objectives rather than to a Sam Allardyce or Steve Coppell figure who have done more to earn it by far exceeding expectations despite financial limitations and starting from a lower base, it is all deeply unsatisfying and suggests that whatever the merits of the case, employees of provincial and middling clubs need not apply.
Must we accept then that as Boro have never threatened to land the top four spot needed to even register in the game's consciousness, that the club have never had a player worthy of a place in the elite XI? Surely that can't be right?
Last year Stewart Downing was a revelation and his ability to beat his man and deliver pinpoint crosses to the far post teed up a string of goals for Yakubu, Mark Viduka and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, helped engineer the downfall of Man United and Chelsea at the Riverside and twice engineered eye-catching Houdini acts in Europe. His displays made him the Premiership's assist king, a must for Fantasy Football teams and marked him out as the most exciting left-sided prospect in English football. But the left sided midfield slot in the PFA team went to right-footed Chelsea bench warmer and stepover merchant Joe Cole.
It was ever thus. The season before Bolo Zenden was brilliant. His creativity in a left central midfield slot transformed Boro and he craeted a string of excellent goals as well as scoring more than his own fair share. His displays were good enough to earn a move to the reigning European champions but not enough to get a slot in the players select.
It seems that unless you play for a big club or attract the attention of the glamour groupies in the media circus that this recognition from peers will not be forthcoming. This season's selection for instance is incredible. Edwin van der Sar has not shown the gravity defying athleticism and reflexes of Ben Foster for instance, nor the positional sense of Peter Cech, nor even kept the number of clean sheets for a weaker team that David James has. And any team that can not find a place for Cesc Fabregas this season is surely a nonsense.
Even within the big four the team is a nonsense. Rio Ferdinand has had an indifferent season, littered with costly mistakes and disrupted by injury. How can he be geta place in this team ahead of consistentlyimpressive Ricardo Carvalho, who held Chelsea together during their long injury ravaged winter and has scored goals to boot or Daniel Agger, central to a run of eight successive clean sheets for Liverpool?
You expect the professionals to be able to identify sublime skills, technical prowess and the off the ball work so vital to overall team performance that the layman, the press box and the cameras often miss. And you expect them to see that rather than be blinded by a shirt. Most clubs - even those not in the G-14 - have two or three players of outstanding ability that screams out for recognition. This season players like Taylor at Portsmouth, Pederson and Bently at Blackburn, Arteta at Everton, Barry at Villa, Davies at Bolton and McBride at Fulham have been brilliant week in, week out. Don't they deserve a shout?
And what about Boro's candidates? Is it too fanciful to put a case that Jonathan Woodgate and Mark Viduka should be included in this season's team? Woodgate has been absolutely outstanding. Having arrived as a 'crock' and after two years on the sidelines has has left superlatives trailing in his wake as he coped with the best the Premiership has to offer without breaking sweat or even into a sprint. His positional sense is so acute that he rarely has to make a tackle, his presence so imposing that opposition forwards retreat and look for another route rather than attack down his channel and his leadership and organisational qualities are reflected in the dramatic transformation of Pogatetz from error-prone lumbering left-back to inspirational central defensive collosus.
Almost every match has been marked by the national lads in the press box drolling over his displays and wondering why he is at Boro, and by opposition managers remarking on his incredible impact on the game. Surely that is worthy of praise and recognition by the players?
And what of Viduka? The Aussie has terrified even the most militarily marshalled defences all season, holding them off with his strength on the ball, pulling them apart a shift of his weight and a little twist. He scores goals, yes, and he sets them up for others, yes. But what he does most effectively of all is unsettles defences, pulls them out of shape and creates fault lines of uncertainty that can be exploited, he forces mistakes and creates panic. Even on Saturday, Manchester United and eight members of the PFA team of the year could not cope with him. Surely that ability dereves to be recognised?
Or I have I got it all wrong? Maybe Boro players are de facto rubbish and we have never had a single player worthy of inclusion.
Meanwhile, the PFA divisional teams, and specifically the Championship one, make for interesting reading. It would be worthwhile Boro regarding them as shopping lists, if only because the players who featured two or three years ago are now the first names shouted out by supporters who insist there is plenty of cut-price talent down there in the lower leagues.
The Championship select from 2003-04 was: Robert Green (Norwich), Phil Jagielka (Sheffield United), Danny Gabbidon (Cardiff), Malky Mackay (Norwich), Julio Arca (Sunderland), Tim Cahill (Millwall), Michael Carrick (West Ham), Jason Koumas (West Brom), Andrew Reid, (Nottingham Forest), Robert Earnshaw (Cardiff), Andrew Johnson (Crystal Palace).
Of those Jagielka, Cahill, Carrick, Koumas and Johnson. You'd take those wouldn't you? And maybe Arca at a push. As cover. Back then they were all bargain basement buys.
Last season's XI was: Marcus Hahnemann (Reading), Gary Kelly (Leeds), Ibrahima Sonko (Reading), Joleon Lescott (Wolves), Nicky Shorey (Reading), Steve Sidwell (Reading), Ashley Young (Watford), Phil Jagielka (Sheffield United), Jason Koumas (Cardiff), Marlon King (Watford), Kevin Doyle (Reading)
Again, putting aside that Reading were aiming to keep their team together, most fans would be keen on Sidwell, Lescott, Jagielka, Koumas and at the right price Young, King and Shorey too.
This Summer's shoppng list, and some of the names have been bandied about for a while already, is: Murray (Wolves), Alexander (Preston), Moore (Derby), Davies (WBA), Bale (Southampton), McSheffrey (Birmingham), Whitehead & Edwards (both Sunderland), Koumas (WBA), Chopra (Cardiff City), Kamara (WBA).
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