Teesside_Steve
Midfield
I actually don't think Southgate was as bad as is being 'remembered' when he was Boro manager.
In his first 2 seasons in charge, we finished 12th and 13th in the premier league , having finished 14th in Steve McClarens last season.
It only started to go wrong (imo) when he became under pressure to balance the books and sell players.
He also lead the team to 3 consecutive FA Cup quarter finals.
I also reckon that he wasn't given time to mount a serious promotion challenge after we'd been relegated.
We'll never know now, but I often wonder if we'd have spent as long out of the premier league (which we've never really recovered from) , if Southgate had been given the chance to rebuild the team his way.
I agree that he wasn't as bad as some made out. We played some decent stuff with him in charge, and he was under pressure to balance the books and sell players, but still wasted a lot of money on the likes of Mido, Digard and Alves (although I think he may have been an unwanted present off the Chairman).
I think he was poor in the transfer market. We went down with a whimper the season when he more or less had his own team, but I do agree that he should have been given the full season in the Championship.
Crazy decision by Gibson to sack him when we were two points off the top.
I always thought he was a bit hard done by at Boro. But I’m only going by the position you lot were in when he was sacked.
I agree with you about previous England managers trying to shoehorn all of the ‘top’ players into a system. The ultimate example of that being Lampard and Gerrard, both were obviously cracking players and in their own right deserved to play, but it was impossible to have a system where the two could play together and be as effective as they were at club level, and this kind of shoehorning was ironically, only ever detrimental to the side on a whole. Moving away from that kind of mindset, which was backed up by an insistent media, is actually by far Southgate’s biggest achievement and definitely something that will benefit the national team, even after he’s left the job.
Yeah, you think of the contrast to Hodgsons' last game against Iceland. He had Sturridge on the right wing, and Rooney in central midfield. It's no wonder we gave a shambolic performance.
Can never forget Euro 2004 as well. Arguably our most technically gifted central midfielder of all time Paul Scholes shafted out to the left wing to accomodate Lampard.
These sort of things hopefully won't ever happen whilst Southgate is in charge.
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