EPL Talk » Tuncay

Middlesbrough Are In Freefall

Paul Bestall — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 20:59:59 +0000

Why can everyone else see Middlesbrough’s problems but Steve Gibson? Whilst his support for Southgate is edifying, it worries me that the Chairman seems so detached from the situation Boro are in by continuing to back Southgate over the evidence of results, performances and the fans. Yet by backing Southgate, Steve Gibson is in danger of losing the support of the fans at the Riverside.” The magic wand in our situation is not sacking Gareth Southgate, but if I was to sack Gareth Southgate at this stage, how would it help the situation” I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news Mr Gibson, but teams that sack managers tend to hit a real vein of form for the next 8 games. Middlesbrough only have 8 games left. Portsmouth have so far collected 8 in 5 matches after removing Tony Adams. That could be enough to save your Premiership status.

Before the last home game, Season ticket holders in the South East block were contacted to ask them not to make noise unless the team were attacking or stand up during games at the Riverside, a bizarre decision that had me scratching my head. When you’ve a stadium full of fans who aren’t happy with the manager and his tactics, pointing the finger of blame at fans smacks of desperation. Southgate himself had a go at the fans after the lucky draw against Portsmouth after they chanted “We’ve only got one player” highlighting Tuncay’s efforts in comparison to his team mates.

“Some chants were disrespectful. The crowd had a right to laud his efforts but we win and lose as a team, the other lads may not have been as eye catching but they made important saves, blocks and interceptions” Continuing on his blame shifting, Southgate claimed it was “Hurtful to some of the other players, We survive as a club and a town by pulling together.”

It comes to something when a football manager tries to put such positive spin on Middlesbrough’s dire run by accusing the fans of being disrespectful and upsetting players. It reminds me of Steve Mclaren’s hellish period in charge of England, when he consistently tried to spin dreadful performances, such as drawing away in Israel and at home to Macedonia as good results. Southgate must be living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks the fans can have the wool pulled over their eyes by being blamed for a run that has seen them pick up just 10 points in 18 games.Tony Adams was sacked by Portsmouth after collecting 13 points in 16 games. Make of that what you will.

The fans want to know how can they beat Liverpool but lose to Stoke and I can’t explain it. Fair enough, the win against Liverpool was fortunate, as the Reds had chance after chance after chance and just couldn’t score and that win is the only reason they’re not joint bottom of the Premiership with West Brom. I honestly can’t see Middlesbrough getting the two wins they need to even get of the bottom 3 in their next 4 matches with tough trips to Bolton and Arsenal, they need maximum points in home games against Hull City and Fulham.

West Brom look dead and buried unless they hit title winning form and the trap door is opening under Middlesbrough. With Gibson refusing to act now, it looks as if Boro are destined to join them unless a footballing miracle occurs. Yet, with relegation a real possibility, is Gibson going to remove Southgate in the Summer? Relegation would see them lose Downing, Tuncay and probably O’Neill to remove all the flair and guile that the side currently have. What quality of player can Southgate attract to the Riverside? His transfer record doesn’t hold much hope for anyone of genuine quality joining Boro whilst he’s in charge. Afonso Alves looks a worse buy every game he plays, a white elephant that cost £12 million pounds. A promotion charge under Southgate looks as far away as Michael Owen staying at Newcastle United.

Sometimes a Chairmans support for a manager can be positive, but sometimes it can smack of sheer bloody mindedness and unfortunately for Middesbrough fans, Steve Gibson’s stance falls into the latter. For Middlesbrough’s fans, the chairman needs to stop hoping for something to happen and keep Middlesbrough in Premiership, unfortunately without Gareth Southgate, otherwise I fear the Boro are doomed.

Warning Signs For Liverpool Despite Injury Time Winner Against Boro

The Gaffer — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:39:08 +0000

If Liverpool fans have dreams of winning the Premier League this season, they can kiss them goodbye. Today at Anfield, Liverpool escaped with a 2-1 win over Middlesbrough with a woeful performance that was rescued by an own goal and then an injury time goal by Steven Gerrard.

This was a cruel blow to Middlesbrough who played a strong defensive game for most of the match under a 4-5-1 formation. Despite creating far fewer chances in front of goal, Boro looked more dangerous after Tuncay spun around a Liverpool defender and his shot was saved by Reina. Then in the 70th minute, Middlesbrough took the lead after Mido struck the ball into the corner of the net.

Liverpool’s equalizer came later when Jamie Carragher’s shot took a wicked deflection off Pogatetz and into the Middlesbrough goal. Then, with the last strike of the ball, Gerrard popped up to rescue Liverpool by striking the ball into the back of the net to send the fans in The Kop into ecstasy.

While the result will go down as three points won for Liverpool, there were several major concerns about Liverpool’s performance today. After they were outplayed for portions of last week’s match against Sunderland, you would expect Liverpool to raise their standard of play for their first home league match of the new season. That was entirely not the case. Liverpool did create plenty of chances, but they were as wasteful as Arsenal are renowned for. Gerrard and Benayoun were practically invisible for most of the match, while Torres and Robbie Keane have still yet to strike up a good partnership.

But most of all, what was missing from Liverpool’s performance is their ability to strike the killer blow. For large portions of the match, especially in the first half, Liverpool almost put Anfield to sleep by playing at a slow tempo that was easy for Middlesbrough to defend against.

To me, that’s one of the major differences between Liverpool and Manchester United. With Sir Alex Ferguson’s side, you can often sense a goal when a goal is coming when they start their blistering attacks. With Liverpool, so far, they’re too predictable and will find it very difficult to outperform Man United, Chelsea or Arsenal this season.

Liverpool needs to improve considerably if they’re serious about trying to stay a top four club this season. Defensively they look strong as long as Hyypia stays on the bench, but they have issues in midfield and up front. The team is relying too much on Fernando Torres just as they did last season when they seemed to be waiting for Gerrard to create something magical.

This is going to be a long season for Liverpool based on their last two poor performances.

Middlesbrough Dazzles With Opening Day Premier League Performance

The Gaffer — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 04:15:36 +0000

The most impressive side I watched, by far, on Saturday was Middlesbrough. The link-up play between Tuncay, Alves, Downing, Aliadiere and, later, Mido was sensational. Wheater was also impressive. At times, it was like watching Brazil with all of the backheels and blistering attacks. Seriously.

While Spurs controlled a lot of the possession in this match and were doing a better job at passing the ball around, they were sloppy in front of goal and failed to create those pinpoint passes that could have led to goals.

The 2-1 win for Middlesbrough was deceiving. Wheater had a goal in the first half that was incorrectly disallowed, but even ignoring that, Boro was much more impressive than Spurs than the scoreline suggests. For Tottenham, it’s back to the drawing board.

Middlesbrough fans will probably be worrying that Boro will continue to do well against big opposition teams but poorly against weaker sides. Let’s hope Gareth Southgate can fix that because the initial signs from Boro this season are very encouraging. They look like a team reborn.

One more impressive thing about Middlesbrough: For the first time in ages, the Riverside sounded like a real football stadium with a cup final atmosphere and noise compared to the empty red seats and stone cold silence we’re accustomed to from Boro.

Here are my thoughts from the other matches:

The deafening sound of boos that erupted around Goodison Park at the end of the 90 minutes against Blackburn should worry the club and its fans. They aren’t too many things to be happy with at Everton lately with the move to Kirkby on hold, no transfer signings, injury problems, boardroom problems and a dissatisfied David Moyes.
At times, Everton’s defending was schoolboy as they let Blackburn run right through the middle of the park unopposed. The perfect example of that was David Dunn who had a lot of space to twist and turn past Phil Jagielka and slot his curving shot into the corner of the net. Joleon Lescott made a crucial mistake to let Roque Santa Cruz pass him to slot the ball into the goal. Even Jason Roberts, yes Jason Roberts, made Everton’s back four look weak by dribbling past three players and getting a shot on goal.
New Blackburn manager Paul Ince should be impressed by the spirit shown by his side. If they can keep Santa Cruz in his side, they should do well this season up front.
Sunderland’s performance at their Stadium of Light against Liverpool was impressive. The team put in every morsel of energy into this match, winning many 50/50 balls and tormenting Rafa Benitez’s side. I wasn’t impressed by Liverpool’s performance at all. Too many sloppy mistakes. Hyypia looked awful. Plessis looked very unsure of himself in central midfield and his replacement Alonso played much better.This is going to be an awfully long season for Liverpool unless they can start making immediate improvement. They created more chances in the second half mostly thanks to Steven Gerrard, but what happens when Gerrard has a weak performance?
Arsenal looked extremely comfortable and confident in their 1-0 win against West Bromwich Albion, but it was classic Arsenal who failed to find a second goal to put West Brom out of reach. Tony Mowbray’s side gave Arsenal a couple of scary moments with the very impressive Ishmael Miller coming close for West Brom. Samir Nasri did well on his first Premier League debut. Chris Brunt also played well for the Baggies, whose side became more comfortable toward the end of the first half. For the first 30 minutes, they couldn’t thread more than a few passes together.Meanwhile, Emmanuel Adebayor continued his frustrating streak of missing some clear-cut chances in front of goal. When he’s off form, the Gunners will be in jeopardy in crunch games.

Euro 2008 Croatia v Turkey Preview & Prediction

Paul Bestall — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:05:10 +0000

First of all, let me say what a super performance Germany gave last night. They tactically outclassed Portugal from the get go and thoroughly deserved their win. Anyway, enough of yesterday, now for today’s big clash. Before yesterday, I’d have put my house on Croatia winning this game, now I’m not so sure I don’t have a niggle like yesterday but Turkey have shown you write them off at your peril. The Croats have played some excellent stuff in this tournament but Turkey have shown tremendous nous and spirit to come back from the dead in two straight games.

Realistically though, Croatia started slowly but have begun to improve game on game, their second string beating Poland 1-0 with a goal from Klasnic and I honestly think that Luka Modric has been one of the star players at this tournament so far. Turkey need to get a man marker on him and try to stifle his creativity. Having said that though, Germany put Frings on him and he danced around him like a statue. Turkey’s danger man is Turan; he loves to come from deep and attack the ball, playing off Nihat and Tuncay. Will Croatia go like for like or simply get the ball down and try and play their way through? Turkey have also lost first choice keeper Voltan after Jan Koller’s acrobatics, so Rustu Recber comes in for his for his record extending 117th cap tonight and the former Barcelona player will be keen to show he’s lost none of his abilities at 35 years of age.

Turkey have shown us all that they are a fast breaking team who play positive, possession football. Both sides have shown that they like to play good attacking football and play with pride for their nations. It is a lesson England would do well to try and emulate in future under Capello. The British press are complaining that this is the weakest of the 4 games but I’m disappointed to hear that type of criticism. Then again, the commentary in last night’s Portugal v Germany game was so biased toward Portugal as to be embarrassing, Ronaldo’s personal fan club defending his every action, slating every German challenge on him and then they didn’t bother interviewing any German players at the end which was really sad to see. Old habits die hard in British football coverage even in 2008.

Both sides fully deserve to be here and I think we’ll get a great game of football. Using my head, I’m going for a Croatian win, maybe 3-2 or 2-1, but if Turkey get a late goal, hold on tight because we’ll get a grandstand finish.