Sometimes, it’s not such a beautiful game after all
THE morning after the night before, waking with that hollow feeling at the pit of your stomach. Middlesbrough’s defeat to Coventry City in the Championship play-offs is hard to swallow and it hurts, make no mistake.
That heartbreak was there to see in the Riverside at full-time. Many supporters and players were devastated alike. Chuba Akpom, after the most remarkable season of his career, was inconsolable. Sometimes football isn’t as beautiful as its endearment suggests.
As Michael Carrick put it after, this Boro team didn’t deserve that. For the ride, for the journey, for the effort throughout – they deserved more. Unfortunately though, when it mattered, on that pitch alone that night, it’s hard to argue that Coventry City didn’t deserve it.
There’s a dominant feeling that’s hard to shake. The feeling of disappointment at a massive missed opportunity for Middlesbrough.
With all due respect to the other three teams in the play-offs, Boro were made favourites because of the individual quality in their squad. Most with no connection to any of the clubs placed Boro as the bestplaced side to go up next season and have a realistic chance of surviving in the Premier League.
All that counts for little though, if you don’t produce on the night. Having failed to take some big chances in the first leg at Coventry on Sunday, this time Boro could not find a route to goal. Credit to Mark Robins’ side, they defended admirably. Solid, compact and stubborn, they gave Boro so little space from which to execute their attacking style. They got their tactics spot-on.
At times the ball didn’t quite drop for Boro in the crucial moments. More often than not though, their final pass or cross was left wanting on the night. At the other end, as
Carrick predicted pre-match, a moment of magic from Gustavo Hamer – probably the most lively player over the course of the three games these two sides shared in succession – separated the sides and sent the Sky Blues to Wembley.
“That’s football, that’s play-off football,” Carrick said after. “You can have the right intentions and go about it the right way. Sometimes you just fall that little bit short and credit to Coventry, they took their chance, they’ve taken their moment. We couldn’t quite pull it off. It’s tough to take but we have to spend time learning from the experience.”
The defeat ends Boro’s promotion
dream for another year. A seventh season in the Championship awaits, as does a big summer for the club in rebuilding the squad to hopefully equip it for another challenge next season. It will be a season in which some big clubs look likely to be joining them from the top flight, and with those parachute payments to boot.
The inevitable inquest must now begin also. For as disappointing as the performance was when it mattered most, it won’t change much now. It would be unfair, too, to throw stones based on one off-night, when far more often than not those players were absolutely enormous throughout the season.
In truth, Boro’s promotion hopes were ended on Wednesday evening to Coventry, but far more costly to the season as a whole was last summer and the 17-game head start that Boro gave their rivals before Carrick’s arrival in October. They were always playing catch-up and it took a monumental effort to do so.
Did they just run out of steam in the end? Perhaps. Did injuries come at the worst possible time? Absolutely. What a difference Jonny Howson, Aaron Ramsey and a fully fit Marcus Forss might have made for Boro’s chances.
“I’m not here to make excuses,” Carrick said when asked about it after. “Injuries are part of the game. Of course it didn’t help, they never do. But I’m not going to sit here and make excuses. We’ve just got to take it on the chin. We’ve been dealt the cards we’ve been dealt, and we couldn’t quite pull it off.”
A disappointed but proud Carrick didn’t want to look too much to the future in the immediate aftermath of the game. He wouldn’t be drawn on transfer talk, even if the likelihood of an important summer rebuild is inevitable. He said enough on the future though.
“We have a lot of young players in the dressing room who haven’t had this type of experience before. The tough ones are always the ones you learn from the most, even though it’s horrible to go through. We have a bit of time over the summer now to think about, learn from it and come back from it.
“I don’t want to get carried away. We’ve just lost a big, big game and a big opportunity. We have to try to learn from it. It’s up to us what happens next.”
That feeling of losing a big opportunity was clearly with Carrick too. Everything felt right for Boro once Carrick arrived, and particularly even more so after the January transfer window – arguably the best window for the club for many years now, which should at least offer optimism for the road ahead.
But with that current squad, so many of whom looked absolutely crestfallen on that pitch at full-time, it just felt like the right time.
In Chuba Akpom they had their first 20-plus goal-a-season striker in 33 years. In Cameron Archer they had their first every January signing since the introduction of the twotransfer-window era to net double figures.
In Carrick, they had a young, progressive and positive head coach. As a collective, they had both an immeasurable togetherness as well as a superb understanding of what was asked of them on the pitch, leading to an incredible run from 21st in the table and just one point above the relegation zone, to finishing fourth and making the play-offs.
Sadly, even with all of that, it hasn’t ended the way we all hoped. Inevitably there will now be change this summer. That squad will look very different when Boro come to kick-off the 2023-24 Championship campaign.
But despite the disappointment of Wednesday evening, the true reflection should be one of pride and optimism in what was achieved, and what can be built on from here. A foundation, is something Carrick spoke about post-match. It’s easier said than done in the moment, but that is the biggest reflection that should be taken.
Make no mistake, right now it hurts. That horrible feeling in the pit of the stomach and that feeling of flatness have been hard to shake all day. That’s what this so-called beautiful game does to us as supporters at times.
But the lows are what make the highs all the better. Come the start of the next season we’ll all be there – carrying the same dreams of making it to the Premier League, reflecting on what was achieved this season and using it to boost belief that they can go one better this time, and pinning excited hopes on the new arrivals to make the difference. That’s what being a football fan is all about.
Especially when you know deep down that those players gave their all for the cause and can head off for the summer with their heads held high. Sometimes football really does hurt.
You can have the right intentions and go about it the right way...you just fall that little bit short
Michael Carrick