Another season is almost over with our final home game tomorrow against Middlesbrough. It may seem odd that having watched so many poor, defensively minded and thrill free games at Cardiff City Stadium over the past nine months or so that this has been City’s best home campaign since 20/21 when we reached the Play Offs.
What that goes to show is just how bad we’ve been at home in the previous three seasons – this time around we have ten wins and nine defeats with the one match to play, so even if we lose to Boro, we’ll have not lost more home matches than we’ve won for the first time since the days of Lee Tomlin.
I usually have a not too successful stab at predicting the outcome of upcoming matches in these quiz pieces, but I’m not going to bother this time because I think anything is possible except for a really big City win (we don’t do them at home any more).
Middlesbrough, widely tipped for the Play Offs or maybe even better, before a ball was kicked have been one of the most inconsistent sides in the division this season, but were finishing it well until they were beaten 4-3 at home by Leeds on Monday – they have the talent to beat us quite easily, but it’s not always applied and we’re at a stage if the season now where a match between two teams with nothing to play for could be a great spectacle or the dullest of 0-0s depending on the attitude of the participants.
In his pre game press conference yesterday, Erol Bulut revealed that Yakou Meite will miss the final two matches with injury, but Josh Bowler and Callum Robinson are over the sickness which kept them out last week, so it would seem that nearly all of the youngsters who were in the squad last week should be again this time – hopefully, that will ensure that the game isn’t that dullest of 0-0s that I mentioned earlier.
Here’s seven Middlesbrough related questions from previous decades, I’ll post the answets on Sunday.
60s. With a nickname which was suggestive of a kind of frivolity and a surname which was anything but frivolous, this “wing half” (defensive midfielder) never played professionally in his native country during a long career which crossed two decades. He started out with lower league ground sharers who were a few years off the most dramatic period in the club’s history. He signed for Middlesbrough after five years at his first club and was at Ayresome Park for a year longer being a regular selection for most of that time. His final club were close to Middlesbrough geographically, but have never really be considered rivals of theirs. When our man retired after four years at his latest club, he was given the manager’s job, but lost it at the end of his second season when he was harshly sacked after a failed promotion bid, who am I describing?
70s. This Leeds born defender who acquired the nickname Rambo at his second club (unlike our Rambo, the nickname came from his uncompromising style of play), signed for Middlesbrough in the middle of this decade, but never played a game for them. His signing for a lower division side hundreds of miles to the south was finalised at football’s first ever transfer tribunal and it was at this club that he made the transformation to First Division defender as his team made it into the top flight for their first, and only so far, promotion to the First Division. When his time came to leave after eleven years during which he’d mostly been an automatic choice in the starting line up, his career still had another six years to run at a club closer to home that had a bigger reputation than the one he’d just left, but had hit on hard times for a while and they remained in the lower divisions before he left for non league football in 1995, who is he?
80s. Senile, but brave Northerner is transformed into Middlesbrough legend. (6,6)
90s. Stephen Pears was a long serving Middlesbrough goalkeeper whose career at the club covered two decades, why is he unique out of all of the players who have played for the club since their formation?
00s. Pencil perhaps combines with something which features in a conversation (which I was going to say was between two insects, but actually, I’d be wrong to do so) to reveal an England international.
10s. We were once linked to signing this defensive midfielder who has won forty seven caps for his country. Ironically, his first club and the one he plays for now are ones that we played in the European Cup Winners Cup half a century or more ago. He’s played for three English teams, but only one of them on a permanent basis – they play in the same colours as us and they loaned him out to stripy Yorkshiremen and Middlesbrough. He played in a losing cause for Boro at Cardiff City Stadium, but can you name him?
20s. Cardiff born, he’s played for a Welsh club, but has played internationally for another country. He’s now left Middlesbrough and has recently signed for a club, which play in hoops, that was managed by a Welshman earlier in the season, who is he?
Answers
60s. Perth born Ray “Yogi” Yeoman signed for Northampton (who would make the quickest ascent from Fourth Division to First in football history during the sixties only to fall all the way back again in record time over the few years) in the early fifties and moved to Middlesbrough in 1958. Six years later, after making more than 200 league appearances for Boro, Yeoman signed for Darlington and was their manager from 1968 to 1970.
70s. Gary Briggs signed for Oxford United having not played in Middlesbrough’s first team and played over four hundred league games for them – he was also in the Oxford team which beat QPR in the 1986 League Cup Final. Briggs signed for Blackpool in 1995 and dropped out of league football at the age of thirty six when he joined Chorley.
80s. Bernie Slaven.
90s. Pears scored the last ever goal at Ayresome Park in his testimonial game when he scored a penalty to seal a 3-1 win for Boro over a Peter Beardsley select team in 1995.
00s. Ray Parlour (a ray of light could be referred to a pencil of light and the fly was invited to “come into my parlour” by the spider).
10s. Bosnian international Muhamed Besic was once a transfer target of ours. It would have been during his first spell with his current club Ferencvaros of Hungary (who we played in the Cup Winners Cup in 1974/75). Besic’s first club was SV Hamburg, the team which, famously, beat us with the last kick of the game in our Semi Final against them in the same competition in 1968.
In the event, Besic signed for Everton in 2014 and spent seven years with them mainly as squad cover. Everton loaned Besic to Middlesbrough for the closing months of the 17/18 season and he made his debut for them in a 1-0 defeat at Cardiff City Stadium. He spent the following season on loan at Boro as well and then he was loaned to Sheffield United for the 19/20 season, but struggled to get much game time.
20s. Graham Kavanagh’s son Callum was born during Kav’s stay with City and was loaned to Newport County by Middlesbrough last season. Callum has played for the Republic of Ireland’s under 17 side and in January he signed a two and a half year deal with Mark Hughes’ old club, Bradford City.
