Worst Ever Boro 11 - We have our team!

Hazzinho said:
Love him as a player but it worst manager was Southgate, the decline was rapid, we went from UEFA cup finalists to utter garbage in 2 seasons. We cut costs but giving away Cattermole and Morrison for peanuts and replacing with O'Neill and Digard was shocking. He got rid of the Boat a season too early and replaced Schwarzer with Jones/Turnbull. So many horror transfers I try and block out. That Cardiff FA cup game too 😭
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How much of that was actually Southgate though?

Cutting costs wasn't his decision. Schwarzer was offered a new contract and rejected it. So was Viduka.

In fact Schwarzer has talked about how Southgate wasn't in control of a lot of things.

Yeah he played a part, but I do think he's also been unfairly scapegoated for things that were the collective responsibility of everyone at the club at the time.

Whereas Strachan and Monk inherited former premier league players, were handed transfer budgets amongst the highest in the league (pretty sure Monk's was the highest in fact) and were still shocking.

No contest for me.
 
Strachan just pips it for me.

Southgate was given a duff hand, nobody could of succeeded at their 1st job with all that was going on.
 
newyddion said:
Who do we appoint instead? Felix Magath? Was it even him?

What are the German equivalents of Alves, Mido, O’Neil, Digard, Aliadiere etc that were available around that time?
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You can't be serious? We were the UEFA cup finalists and our profile had never been higher. There will have been a lot of good options and if not then you appoint an interim until one becomes available. Southgate was an atrocious appointment. He wasn't ready. I know it had worked with Robson and McClaren but it was just arrogant of Gibson who wanted to prove something because Southgate didn't have any badges and he didn't like being told he couldn't appoint him.

As for finances, Southgate didn't have as much money to spend as we had previously but he inherited the best youth squad we have ever produced. We still had a squad full of internationals. He said early on to judge him after 3 seasons when the squad was his so that is what I am doing. It/he was horrendous. He couldn't get us to score goals. In his 2nd season we didn't score more than 2 goals in a game until the final day of the season (when we inexplicably scored 8) tot take us to 43 goals in 38 games. The following year we scored 28 and only won 2 of the last 26 games.

I don't think he was our worst ever manager but I will never accept he was anything better than terrible.

We might have finished higher than McClaren's last season but we stopped fielding a first team in the league because we were playing so many cup matches.
 
Btw RC was banned in my house growing up and even now my dad grimaces if that name is ever mentioned. I had to drive through Sunderland the other week and he was shocked to see they’ve named an estate after him.

As for Gareth who was our no 1 keeper in that last year in the prem ??
 
Jedi boro said:
Btw RC was banned in my house growing up and even now my dad grimaces if that name is ever mentioned. I had to drive through Sunderland the other week and he was shocked to see they’ve named an estate after him.
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So that's another vote for Raich Carter, then.
 
Although before my time I can see why Carter would be the obvious choice, responsible for taking us to the third tier for the first time and he didn't have the financial difficulties that Maddren had in 1986.
 
Southgate was obviously tasked with reducing costs, hence shipping out good players and replacing them with dross. We did have starting 11's around that time with no Centre Mids at all, with the defenders such as Arca, Bates, Williams making up our midfield. No wonder we were bad. But I don't blame Southgate entirely, because I don't think he was necessarily solely to blame for the decline we were going through. This was post UEFA cup, and I think we had to come back down to earth at some point due to the finances at the club at that time. Even the appointment of Southgate himself was the cheap option. Eventually scrimping and saving will result in poor in field results.

Monk is a strange one. Statistically his managerial record with us was good. They rightly got rid of him for other reasons.

It's still Strachan for me. I was happy when he came because I thought he was light hearted and likeable and had a reasonable managerial record. His sarcasm and poor attitude and awful signings very quickly changed my mind.
 
wilkos_perm said:
I agree on Killen. He wasn't awful, he was sort of just functional. Not a bad player, just not really a goalscorer. Possibly one of the worst human beings to play for us though.
www.gazettelive.co.uk

Ex-Middlesbrough striker Chris Killen admits sex attack on woman

New Zealand international Chris Killen, who played for Boro in the Championship, pleaded guilty to the attack
www.gazettelive.co.uk www.gazettelive.co.uk
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Didn't know about that. I'm gonna stop defending him now. This does lead to a number of other threads we could start. Worst 11 (ability wise) worst (heart the size of a pea wise) and worst (human being wise).
 
Isn't Strachan walking away without a payout a myth? One that Rob normally debunks as soon as it is mentioned on here?

Strachan for me though. Filled the team with overpaid sunday league players and was a massive **** when talking to the press. Somehow every game under him felt like it was played on a Tuesday night. Knocked our attendance down to 4 figures, even if it wasn't reported as such at the time. Must be the time in boro history with the highest number of non-attending season ticket holders. Set us back years
 
Redlips said:
Southgate by a mile
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I'm not sure about that.

Strachan was a vastly experienced manager that spent what little money we had on Scottish has-beens, including 500K to Aberdeen for a player that everyone in the game knew was utter gash (that was a dodgy deal if ever there was one!).

Southgate was a rookie who was dealt a sh1ty hand by inheriting an aging team, and he wasn't given the funds needed to survive a rebuild.

All circumstances considered, Strachan was a disaster for this club. He set us back years.
 
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Know nothing about him as a manager, but tempted to say Stan Anderson solely because of the existence of a photo of my dad holding a copy of the Gazette with the headline "Anderson Quits" with the biggest grin you could imagine across his face.

I love that photo.
 
bittersweetb said:
Isn't Strachan walking away without a payout a myth? One that Rob normally debunks as soon as it is mentioned on here?

Strachan for me though. Filled the team with overpaid sunday league players and was a massive **** when talking to the press. Somehow every game under him felt like it was played on a Tuesday night. Knocked our attendance down to 4 figures, even if it wasn't reported as such at the time. Must be the time in boro history with the highest number of non-attending season ticket holders. Set us back years
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Direct quotes from Gibbo saying he walked away without a payout.

Rob says otherwise though.
 
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