A TEAM LIVING ON BORO'D TIME; Big spenders - big trouble.
Been reading this book about mega-rich dudes in the polluted future who survive Armageddon by creating their own artificial planets inside plastic bubbles.Armageddon? Sorry, Rav, not a word you and your Middlesbrough mates, with your limited grasp of Eenglish, will be familiar with.
But unless Bryan Robson comes up with a miracle survival plan of his own you'll be yelling it soon.
As in: Arm-a-geddon outta here.
Because the end of the world is nigh for Boro.
And there isn't a sci-fi freak alive whose imagination could come up with a shelter strong enough to protect them from the fallout.
They are one league game from almost certain relegation and if Emerson sticks around to get his curls soaked on miserable nights at Bury next season I'm a small village in Lincolnshire.
He'd split, as would Rav and Juninho, I'm sure of it.
Get out while the going was bad, get the agents to find them the next club they always dreamed of playing for as a kid in Sao Paulo or Rio or Perugia.
Of course, there's still a chance they'll escape the drop, beat Chesterfield, win the FA Cup and ultimately call the campaign a success.
But having seen their faces after Wednesday night's Coca-Cola Cup final replay defeat by shoestring Leicester, I doubt it.
Boss Bryan Robson looked haunted, tortured. Lost.
Beat Sunderland in the league tomorrow and little Chesterfield in the FA semi replay and he breathes again - lose either and it's catastrophe.
All those millions spent and it comes down to that. Everyone in football should watch and learn - before more clubs start scrambling for the plastic bubbles.
I'm sure Boro chairman Steve Gibson is a good bloke. His heart's in the right place.
He has given the club a beautiful new stadium and, with Robson, confounded the world by convincing world-class performers to come to smoggy Teesside.
But there the game plan seems to have ended. Build a ground. Buy some superstars. Er, that's it.
And now they find that in football - the game, not the industry - celebrity status is worth the square root of sod all.
Which is why Leicester, a club with the pzazz of a bridie, are this morning the talk of the game and why they have a cup on their sideboard.
It is because their chairman and their manager have spent washers building a team of artisans trained to win games, not squillions on a collection of artists brought to put bums on seats.
Rarely have I been as pleased to see a side lift a trophy.
Boro tried to BUY glamour. Leicester went out to EARN it.
Last season Steve Claridge, 14 years a journeyman pro, scored the goal which put Leicester in the Premier League. On Wednesday he struck to win the cup.
For those who balance the Filbert Street books, those two strikes are worth 10 times, a 100 times, a 1000 times their outlay on the player.
How many goals does Ravanelli have to score before Boro get a return on pounds 7million and pounds 42,000-a-week?
This is football's false economy, a world where owners believe the only way to match the big boys is to buy big names, any big names.
Pay them a fortune, put up with the whingeing when they realise that glow in the night sky isn't the sunset but the local chemical plant, pose with them in the papers.
Then cross your fingers that they might, just might, feel like doing the business when the going gets tough.
And when they don't? What happens then?
Do Boro have it in them to scrap and snarl and grind out three points against third-bottom Sunderland?
Have they the bottle to see off a Chesterfield team with nothing to lose and the entire country willing them to win?
Money can't save Boro now. It's down to football. Like it should be.
Maybe Emerson WOULD stay around to play Bury. Maybe he and the rest AREN'T just there for the dosh.
And maybe the guff which comes out of Middlesbrough's many chimneys is strawberry-flavoured.
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| Title Annotation: | Sport |
|---|---|
| Author: | Leckie, Bill |
| Publication: | Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) |
| Date: | Apr 18, 1997 |
| Words: | 682 |
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