AFTER another bout of blood-letting down at the bottom the ever shrewd bookies have fine-tuned their odds on the relegation battle - but despite the anxious gnashing and wailing emanating from Teesside after the sickening late sucker punch KO delivered by Reading it is not Boro that they have shifted closer to the trapdoor.
Yes, Boro slipped back within touching distance of the basement battlers after that coupon busting kick in the teeth - in truth they have never really been far beyond it, even after the recent purple patch - but the crucial results prompted bookies to slash the odds on not our heroes but on Bolton, battered 3-1 by Liverpool, and crisis club Newcastle, caught cold late on at home to Blackburn to lose 1-0. As far as the number-crunchers are concerned it is they, not Boro, who are looking increasingly vulnerable to being sucked in towards financial oblivion.
In fact, putting aside the doom-and-gloom knee-jerk masterclass that followed the entirely predictable defeat to Reading - they had lost eight in a row and had not won an away game all season plus Lawro had tipped us to win so in the perverse shadow world of 'typical Boro' it was a cast iron certainty - our relegation odds actually remained unchanged at a 14-1 long shot.
That is because while fans, partisan and passionate by their nature, may be caught up in the hothouse arguments of a moment coloured by the emotional response to the last few results and start to bleakly bet on an icy cold fear of a Back To The Future Wembley defeat and relegation double, the bookies stand back and view it objectively. They weigh up probabilities based on close analysis of the statistical trends in form and predict the outcome of fixtures based not on a subjective chickenrun/ra-ra ideology but measured against the complexities of the mathematical matrix that also engulfs the rest of the desperate looking relegation battlers.
And as far as the bookies are concerned, when you look at the situation dispassionately, Boro are the team that are in 12th place, that have lost just two games in 12, that lead the rest of the strugglers in the form table and who have the run-in likely to yield the points needed to ensure they limp over the safety barrier soonest. Maybe if they listened to the almost suicidal told-you-so spleen-venting on Century they would see it differently but right now Ladbrokes, the Gazette's official bookies, rate Gareth Southgate's side as the least likely of all the candidates to go down. They have Bolton at 2-1; Reading 9-4; Birmingham 11-4; Sunderland 3-1; Wigan 4-1; Newcastle 11-2; then Boro looking rank outsiders at 14-1. It's not even worth a daft quid.
Amid the recriminations, jitters and doubts after Reading it is worth considering the value of an objective perspective. Fans only see their own teams weaknesses: sloppy defending, the imagination deficit in midfield, a lack of a cutting edge and fitness, tactical and selection blunders, the keeping howlers, the failure to play for the full 90. It is a elective myopia.
But the other teams are equally inept - that is why they are down there - and for all Boro’s wobbling form and on the field flaws, the rest are demonstrably, statistically far worse.
Boro remain 12th, as they were before the game. There has been no grand meltdown. The gap between the current position and the relegation hot spots is down to four points - but that is only one less than after the spirited 1-1 draw with Liverpool early in January when the consensus was that even if Boro had not turned the corner they certainly had the indicators on.
The reality is that it is any one from seven team for the final relegation place - and the other six are below Boro. That means that while it is perfectly reasonable to expect this team or that team to claw back the handful of points needed to overhaul Boro, for our heroes to go down it would take ALL SIX sides below them to do it simultaneously.
The way the remaining fixtures stack up mean they all have to play each other so if two or three teams are to make a break for freedom in a bloody no-holds-barred street-fighting survival battle then they must do it at the expense of their fellow trapdoor dancers and that will make it all the more difficult for those others to follow suit. So even if Boro do go off the boil the odds are still stacked heavily it favour of them staying up, even if it is by default. Again. In truth, for all the searing criticism of the lack-lustre performances in recent weeks, no one would seriously trade places with a single one of those relegation rivals.
Derby are gone and need a dramatic upturn just to match Sunderland’s record low water mark of 15. Fulham are all but nailed into the coffin too. That leaves six that must climb above Boro for the unthinkable to happen. It won’t. In what has been a poor Premiership the survival mark will be a lot lower than the usual 40 points. In fact 36 could easily do it - leaving Boro needing just seven points to set a target almost impossible for all six to match.
Let’s look at the contenders’ form. Any statistical snapshot is arbitrary but lets go for the last six games, the traditional unit of measurement. Boro have taken eight points from their last six and are sitting pretty in tenth in the current form table.
None of the teams below Boro in the real table are above them on form, although Wigan and Sunderland are within a point suggesting they could be the ones ready to push on. Dead men Derby have three points and Reading have the same - the ones they mugged from Boro - while ailing Newcastle have just a meagre two from a possible 18 and must now be reckoned to be the most vulnerable of all the strugglers.
We know how tricky Boro’s fixtures look in the final straight: tough trips to Villa, Arsenal, Chelsea and Spurs beckon along with title chasing Man United at home but they also have Derby and Bolton plus Pompey and poor travellers Manchester City at home and Sunderland away. We know form counts for little - look at the Reading game - but there are at least seven points in there even before you factor in Boro’s uncanny ability to collect unlikely results against one of the big boys.
And if you think that is a tough run in, just look at Bolton’s fixtures. Or Wigan’s. Or Sunderland’s. No one below has an ‘easy’ sequence with most having two or three games against the Champions League contenders, a couple against UEFA Cup hopefuls and a couple of do-or-die clashes with relegation rivals... any team that does now go above Boro will be climbing over the bodies of the dead.
That doesn’t mean we should be complacent. A cup diversion next week could see Boro slip back a couple of places but that should not be reason to panic. We all knew from the beginning that the squad was thin in some areas, that a few injuries would leave the team short and that we would struggle for goals. We all expected that Boro would spend most of the season down in PL Division three and most predicted the team would finish somewhere between 16th and 12th. The wild optimists were talking big and thought maybe tenth. So far from falling short in some way or lurching into crisis, Boro are actually bang on target - even if the bar was set very low.
So there is no point now slating the team for not being world beaters. We knew that. But they have improved over the course of the season as Southgate has fine-tuned his squad and style. We must hold our nerve and stick behind a team that looks solid, spirited and increasingly has options up front. As the boss has said, league survival remains the top priority and we need to get to the safety mark as quickly as possible - and also set our sights on progress in the FA Cup. And with a team somewhere near full strength and playing with the determination that has produced the results of recent months that should be easily achievable.
I've been on the BBC predictor a dozen times over the past week or so and even with a bit of a jaundiced jiggle Boro don't go down. In order for that to happen you need to not only adopt a real Chickenrun cynicism about Boro but also a naive belief in logic smashing runs of freak results for all the others. See what you think . The remaining fixtures:
BORO - 12th (29pts)
A Aston Villa
A Arsenal
H Derby
A Chelsea
H Man Utd
A Tottenham
H Bolton
A Sunderland
H Portsmouth
H Man City
NEWCASTLE
13th (28)
A Liverpool
A Birmingham
H Fulham
A Tottenham
H Reading
A Portsmouth
H Sunderland
A West Ham
H Chelsea
A Everton
WIGAN
14th (27)
H Arsenal
H Bolton
A Blackburn
A Portsmouth
H Birmingham
A Chelsea
H Tottenham
H Reading
A Aston Villa
H Man Utd, 15:00
SUNDERLAND
15th (27)
H Everton
H Chelsea
A Aston Villa
H West Ham
A Fulham
H Man City
A Newcastle
H BORO
A Bolton
H Arsenal
BIRMINGHAM
16th (26)
A Portsmouth
H Newcastle
A Reading
H Man City
H Wigan
H Everton
A Aston Villa
H Liverpool
A Fulham
H Blackburn
BOLTON
17th (25)
A Wigan
A Man Utd
H Man City
H Arsenal
A Aston Villa
H West Ham
A BORO
A Tottenham
H Sunderland
A Chelsea
READING
18th (25)
H Man City
A Liverpool
H Birmingham
H Blackburn
A Newcastle
H Fulham
A Arsenal
A Wigan
H Tottenham
A Derby
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