BATTLING BIRMINGHAM gave Boro the blues and clawed over them and up towards safety by showing a more ruthless streak in front of goal. And therein lies the problem. Boro had the bulk of posession against Brum and 16 shots but bar a second half piledriver from Tuncay that brought a good one handed save never really looked a threat.
It was the same story against West Ham when Boro created enough going forward to win comfortably yet somehow contrived to lose because the visitors - who had before won at the Riverside - had a striker who knew where the goal was.
The catestrophic lack of a cutting edge threatens to drag Boro down. A team now firmly entrenched in the relegation zone is in desperate need of firepower if it is to escape - especially if they can't grind out crucial points by keeping clean sheets.
At least boss Gareth Southgate was honest in his assessment of a result that has left Boro looking very vulnerable once more. He pointed the finger at the whole team for a humiliating and potentially costly flop:
"We didn’t deserve anything from the game. I thought we were very, very poor in the first half and didn’t get out of the traps. I’ve heard people use the phase ‘we have turned the corner’. I knew we hadn’t and the evidence was there for everyone to see. There is a tremendous amount of hard work to be done."
Especially up front, and it will take new blood rather than just tinkering with systems and praying that Mido comes back fighting fit and firing bullets.
Boro have scored just 17 goals in 19 games - only Derby with a paltry nine are less prolific - and that is why they are struggling. Only the points gained in the typical Boro perversity of the Arsenal result is keeping Boro out of the bottom three and, as we discussed going into the festive fixture crunch, the dogfight is going to be vicious and bloody. Goals will be vital.
Of the 17 goals so far the expensively assembled new strike force of Mido (2) and Aliadiere (1) have made barely an impact. The injury dogged £8.5m duo have three goals between them, and have played four times together (and of those only two were the full 90). The midfield/attacking free roving maverick Tuncay has scored three after finally being given a position that suits him and time to settle into it. Ben Hutchinson, who surely never believed he would make the first team this term, has also scored - a feat which looks beyond Lee Dong Gook.
Seven goals from the front runners in 19 league games is an embarrassment and worst is an indictment of both the players themselves and the recruitment policy that invested so much in them - and not just financially. The two were supposed to be the cutting edge of a new brand of cavalier attacking football. In fact the Boro have been blunt up front and with the squad so thin the decision not to recruit an extra bustling striker in August looks a poor one. I would normally have qualified that and said 'in retrospect' except that almost everyone at the time said that given Mido's fitness record and Aliadiere's goal stats the policy of crossing their fingers and hoping for the best left the club as a hostage to fortune.
Last season at the same stage Boro had scored just 17 goals, the same as this term, and although they had three more points they were only two above the drop zone. But, and it is a big but, Boro had Viduka and Yakubu up front and a deep seated belief that one or the other of those would deliver the goods, a belief often echoed by opposition managers as the team scraped another point. And it was a belief that was ultimately justified .
After Christmas Yakubu added ten more to take his tally to 16 for the season despite a barren final three months. And Viduka, prodded into action by the fat lady clearing her throat on his contract talks, scored 16 after Santa's visit to finish on 19. How many people now believe that the Mido/Aliadiere combo will add 26 goals between now and May? Or indeed all four first team frontmen between them? That question must weigh on the minds of Gareth Southgate and Steve Gibson as they weigh up the wisdom of plunging into the January sales.
The need for a striker is pressing. Mido is out for at least two weeks and then may need two or three weeks to get fully match fit - assuming he doesn't break down again. The system Boro have been set up to play demands a targetman to hold up the ball and allow the midfield to break at speed and it has been made abundently clear that no one else in the squad can do that crucial and demanding job.
So where are we? In trouble. Sunderland have only scored 17, Wigan have got 19, Fulham 20 and Bolton and Birmingham 21 - and those must be seen as our main rivals this season now. And apart from Fulham they all have at least one striker with either the physical strength or clinical finishing that would see them walk into Boro's first team and could yet save their team's seasons: Nicolas Anelka, Kevin Davies, Mikael Forsell, Emile Heskey and Kenwyne Jones.
The defence is in trouble too. Despite adding Luke Young - an undoubted boon - Boro have shipped 33 goals in 19 games and only the four teams below have been more porous. At his stage last year Boro had only conceded 24, a massive difference and one that gave a glimmer of hope that one goal at the other end may be enough to secure at least one point.
The defence on paper is better now but because the ball is not sticking up front it is coming back more often and because Boro are not making their own chances count the penalty for cracking under the increased pressure at the back is defeat.
Much can be done to to plug the leaks, especially by increasing concentration levels in the red zones that really have spelled danger this term, but the real long term solution to minimise the effect of leaking goals is to make sure they are being racked up at the other end. The threat that Boro may score will change the way the opposition play. Goal themselves will alter the dynamic of games: we have seen how Boro play with a spring in their step if they score first.
And that means bringing in a striker - and possibly two - that have proven Premiership records and are used to the intensity and physicality of the scrap at the bottom. Right now I would take Dickov and Beattie. That pairing would have won Boro the game at Birmingham. They would rough up defences, force errors and pull holes for the Fancy Dans to exploit.
If we don't have the finance to bring in racehorses then workhorses are better than donkeys.
**Apologies to dedicated readers (or saddos, as I believe the technical terms is) who couldn't get onto the site over the past few days. I know I couldn't. I think the computer geeks switched off as they left on Christmas Eve/ Normal service is resumed.
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