Former Real Madrid coach Aito Karanka has steadied the Middlesbrough ship since succeeding Tony Mowbray, but he'll need to address a goalscoring problem if the progress is to continue next season.

Overview

The thirst to replicate the success of the Spanish national team and leading clubs on these shores makes it seem, at times, that you only have to have strolled down Barcelona’s Las Ramblas on a day trip, or shaken hands with Jose Mourinho in a coffee shop, to lead the candidate list for a managerial job in the Championship at the moment.

Football in this country has changed beyond all recognition over the past 25 years, and it began with the start of the Premier League and clubs like Middlesbrough looking abroad for talents like Juninho and Ravenelli when previously a foreign player was an exception in a top flight match, and virtually unheard of any lower.

These days it’s the coaches — and they are coaches, not managers — who come from warmer climes. The work of Roberto Martinez will, I believe, be looked back on as a pioneering game changer when history is written in years to come and the success that he initiated at Swansea, that was later carried on by Brendan Rodgers who now looks more likely than many before him to end Liverpool’s long wait for a league title, will be the model to follow. Ian Holloway, whose QPR team played direct “bad rashing” football focused very much on turning opposition full backs around and pressing them high up the pitch, spoke about the epiphany he had watching Martinez’s team play, when the out ball goes width ways to a winger on the far touchline, rather than lengthways behind the other team’s defence.

It’s made dinosaurs of certain British coaches, who now queue up behind Peter ‘Reidy’ Reid to sit on the Goals on Sunday sofa and say they’ “definitely go back in if the right opportunity comes up”. Sam Allardyce says things like “Reidy shouldn’t have to go to Thailand for a job” and claims that he’d have had some of the top jobs in the world game if his surname was Italian sounding. These people no doubt look at Aito Karanka getting the Middlesbrough job, and Oscar Garcia arriving at Brighton and shake their heads.

Hell, Karanka even replaced a club legend at the Riverside Stadium to become the club’s first foreign manager. Tony Mowbray was revered as a player in the north east in the same way the late Alan McDonald was at QPR and sacking somebody held in such high regard, regardless of the poor run of form Boro had been on in the second half of last season and the first few months of this, must have felt like shooting Bambi.
Karanka, a player with Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid, was Mourinho’s assistant manager at the Bernabeu, and coached the Spanish Under 16 side for a while, but it’s not a CV that’s much more remarkable than a hundred other young coaches. And yet Boro had to beat off competition from Crystal Palace for his signature, and he came with a string of recommendations from Mourinho, Peter Kenyon (for some reason) and, rather more concerningly, football agent Jorges Mendes.

Since arriving he’s kept a rather lower profile than Garcia at Brighton, whose agent ensures he’s never far away from a half page spread in a Sunday broadsheet, but both have focused on making their teams solid and hard to beat first and foremost. Back in September when these sides last met Boro were a side that scored plenty — ten in the five games before they visited Loftus Road, 11 in the four that followed — but also let lots in. Now they do neither of those things — they’ve kept six clean sheets in the last nine games but won only one, drawing a further six.

That’s all rather reminiscent of Paulo Sousa’s brief time as QPR manager where eight of his 24 games in charge finished 0-0. One wondered whether Sousa was merely addressing the defence first before moving onto the attack, and of course we never got to find that out at Loftus Road, but given that his Swansea team subsequently drew ten matches 0-0 the following season I think it’s fair to say he was just very negative tactically. It will be intriguing to see if Karanka opens Middlesbrough up next season, when presumably he’ll have been given a chance to add strikers during the summer — foreards Marvin Emnes and Lukas Jutkiewicz have both been shipped out by the new man after failing to impress leaving them light on attacking numbers.

I do wonder sometimes whether there’s a deal of ‘Emperor’s new clothes; about some of these foreign appointments. Garcia, at Brighton, was starting to hear the first few rumblings of discontent prior to their victory over QPR last week, with people talking of dull football and a weak attack. The Middlesbrough fans we spoke to today seem impressed with Karanka so far, but will that patience last if the goal scoring drought turns out to simply be his style of play? It can sometimes feel like, not wanting to be branded a footballing luddite or typical English philistine, nobody actually wants to question why on earth coaches with meagre CVs are coming over here and beating better qualified Englishmen to jobs, and then setting their teams up purely to hold onto possession in their own half and not concede goals which can actually be quite dull to watch.

The 2014/15 Middlesbrough will be an interesting team to keep a firm eye on

Interview

Having failed to make friends with Middlesbrough fan during the last 29 years of my life, or find one during the plan B appeal on the Twitter earlier this week, we reverted to plan C and asked the regulars of the http://fansonline.net/middlesbrough/mb/view.php?id=3946655>FMTTM message board for some input on their side. Read all the answers we got by clicking that link, or view a selection below.

Assess Middlesbrough's season for us so far, a disappointment? What you expected? How's it gone?

“As I imagine 75% of all teams at the start of a season do, especially after 'recently' being in the Premiership, we expected a push for a play-off play. The second half of last season probably dampened hopes for this year after the run we went on. We started this season as we ended last and any hopes of doing anything were quickly extinguished. I'd say overall, it's been a very frustrating and disappointing season for us.”

“Started the season with a lot of optimism despite our awful run towards the end of last season. We started off scoring a lot of goals but also letting them in for fun as well. Looked like we'd end up mid table/relegation fight until Mowbray left. Karanka came in and we were in brilliant form, Shay Given on loan around the same time also increased optimism. The form dried up along with our ability to score goals. We now look nailed on for mid table with the season to just to slowly fizzle out.”

Given Tony Mowbray's status at your club, what did you make of the decision to sack him?

“Sacking Mowbray was the correct and only choice Gibson could make. We were in complete free fall and heading for League One. He'd completely lost the dressing room and once the vast majority of the fans started to turn it was only going to end in tears. Mogga is, and always will be, a club legend and an unsuccessful tenure as gaffer isn't going to change that.”

“It was a shame and very sad, but it had to happen. He trimmed the wage bill and we played some decent stuff at times, but we were sinking without a trace and the appalling stats spoke for themselves."

How have things gone since? What changes have been made to the team? What do you make of the new man?

“Since Mowbray's sacking, Karanka has come in and steadied a rocking ship. He identified our leaky defence and we are now very, very hard to break down (11 clean sheets from the last 14 games). That has come at a price as our attacking play has taken a hit and we've struggled in front of goal, but he's been here for a few months and can't do everything, at once, with only a one month window. We've flirted with the play offs after looking like dead certs for relegation, so on whole he's doing a great job and I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do with a summer window and more time.”

Who have been the stand out performers in the team, and who are the weak links?

“Albert Adomah, Muzzy Carayol, George Friend and Shay Given have been players of the season for me, although Given has since gone back to his parent club. We've got Kenneth Omeruo on loan from Chelsea who looks outstanding also. I wouldn't identify a single player as a weak link, more a department. Emnes and Jutkiewicz just weren't doing it for us and have since been shipped out on loan.”

“We are very strong on the wings, but our main man Muzzy Carayol got injured last week and won't be playing for a while. Adomah is a good player but is out of form at the moment and Ledesma is always a threat when he cuts inside onto his left foot. We're also very, very strong at the back. Our weak link at the back is probably Varga. He's a fans favourite, but teams often target him and is often caught out with a long ball over the top of him. He's also very poor and panicky on the ball which is surprising considering he came to the club as a midfielder. His pressing and work rate is outstanding though. Our main weakness is in attack though. We're really struggling to score at the moment and I can't see this changing on Saturday.”

“Stand out performers I guess would be Adomah but he hasn't started a lot of games recently but has bags of pace and looks a threat. Omeru on loan from Chelsea looks very solid at the back and has been impressive. Weak links one is a hard one, at the beginning of the season I would have said George Friend but he has improved a lot this season in that sense. There isn't really a weak link individually, it's more a weak link that we can't score and struggle to threaten teams.”

Short, medium and long term ambitions for the club...

“If we can continue to be tight at the back and hard to break down alongside expanding our attacking play and start finding the net, there's no reason we can't be a top six side next year.”

“I think we can go up next season with this manager. He's sorted the defence out and with a few attacking additions in the summer, we'll be a threat next season. One thing is for sure, we're a much tougher team to play against than the one that lost so timidly at Loftus Road.”

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francisbowles added 14:22 - Mar 21 Solid at the back. so can't see us scoring and pace could be a problem for our OAP defence.
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TacticalR added 21:57 - Mar 21 Thanks for your oppo report and to the Middlesbrough fans. The parallel with Paulo Sousa is an interesting one. On TV Karanka comes across as harassed and frustrated. At the time we hired Sousa the Portuguese were in vogue, now it seems to be the Spanish. Still, in Britain we import everything else, so why not managers? No mention of Danny Graham? Let's hope he doesn't come back to haunt us - he scored two goals against Ipswich earlier this month.

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