If Aitor Karanka thinks he can change Middlesbrough's footballing culture, he may have to think again
The Spaniard criticised his own club's supporters after last weekend's defeat to West Ham United
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Your support makes all the difference.‘The crowds in the North East are also incredibly passionate about the game - sometimes too passionate as there can be a tendency for them to want the ball into the box too quickly.’
This is perhaps the starting point for the events which unfolded at Middlesbrough on Saturday tea-time. They are not the words of the current manager Aitor Karanka, who, on Thursday afternoon, stood by his criticism of his own club’s supporters, which came in the immediate aftermath of a 3-1 defeat at home to West Ham United.
They instead come from Stan Anderson and his autobiography, Captain of the North. He should know a little bit about North-east football, having captained Newcastle United, Sunderland and Middlesbrough (the only player ever to have done so) and managed Middlesbrough for seven years.
Anderson, who was in the England squad for the 1962 World Cup finals, was born in Horden, a former pit mining village, in Durham. Karanka, the current Middlesbrough manager, was born in Vitoria-Gasteiz, a Basque region in Northern Spain. Their reigns in charge are split by four decades, but there is a theme, though it felt lost on Thursday, when Karanka looked bemused as he was asked if he would apologise for his criticism of the atmosphere inside the Riverside Stadium in the closing period of the game against West Ham - best exemplified by a vociferous 78th minute chant of ‘attack, attack, attack’.
“No. I don't need to apologise to anybody because I have to apologise when I make mistakes and I don't think I made a mistake to ask for respect for the players,” he said in reply. “That's not a mistake.
“I can't understand because it wasn't a criticism. If someone has taken it as a criticism that's their problem. I asked for respect. What I did was to defend my players. They've been doing an amazing job for the last three years, and to play the last 5-10 minutes with the stadium almost empty, it was just this.
I don't need to apologise to anybody because I have to apologise when I make mistakes and I don't think I made a mistake to ask for respect for the players.
“It's not wrong for me (when the fans chant attack), it's wrong for the players. They are the ones on the pitch, for me it's not a pressure. I've played in front of 90,000 people, when you don't have that experience and the atmosphere isn't right, asking for something that you're not used to doing, it's difficult for them.
"They (the players) thought the thing I said to the press was completely right. The players told me I was completely right. That's why I went to the press conference, because I could feel their faces when I was in the dressing room."
The nuance had certainly been lost on Saturday night, when Karanka’s personal Twitter account was lit up by increasingly furious Middlesbrough supporters. ‘give us more respect for turning up ya melt,’ wrote @UTB76. ‘fans pay hard-earned money to watch millionaires waltz around. We’re entitled to act how we want,’ penned @Nicko443.
It had felt a key moment, when the chant had started. Not one of support for the team. It felt a criticism of a style of football.
Rafa Benitez was born in Madrid. His Newcastle team this season have won more league games than any of the other 91 in the country. Whenever there has been a poll in the city’s newspaper, the Evening Chronicle, about the starting eleven for the following game, a debate starts about playing two centre forwards. Many favour it, still. Benitez keeps winning games by playing a lone forward and yet the debate still rages. In a quiet briefing he called it the short blanket; too much up top and your feet get cold.
Karanka would not accept that he is attempting to alter the footballing culture of a region, but there is an argument that the pair of Spaniards are fighting long held regional beliefs about what a North-east team should embody; spirit and urgency being at its forefront.
“I don't want to change the mentality of anyone,” said Karanka. “The chairman brought me here three years ago to be in the Premier League. The first season was to save the team, because the team was in a difficult situation. Now we're in the Premier League, and I don't need to convince anybody.
“Last season when we played in our own style, we scored I don't know how many goals in the last minutes, last Saturday when we didn't play in that style we didn't score and we conceded. I don't need to say anything. In the last ten minutes, trying a ball to the centre-half or the centre-forward, it doesn’t always work.”
Early in 2011, Alan Pardew - long before his reign at Newcastle became toxic - bemoaned his team charging towards the Gallowgate End for a second goal against Tottenham Hotspur in injury-time. Aaron Lennon broke and equalised. Two weeks later Newcastle went four-nil down to Arsenal inside 26 minutes, before launching one of the Premier League’s most dramatic comebacks.
In 1985, Jack Charlton, then in charge of Newcastle, marched onto the pitch to remonstrate with Peter Beardsley for dribbling late in a game when Newcastle were winning one-nil against Luton Town. Charlton went first, resigning after criticism of his style of football in a friendly six months later.
Karanka, whose odds to be sacked tumbled dramatically early this week, admitted he had met the Middlesbrough owner Steve Gibson for lunch. He would not say what about but he was smiling.
“I have been here three years,” he added. “Last season, I left. This season, I have been sacked. I do not know what is going to happen next season. It is all rumours. One thing that is not a rumour - and that the people in the crowd know - is that I arrived here three seasons ago and since then, I have been thinking about this club 24 hours a day, and I want the best for this club. That is not a rumour, it is a truth.”
He remains at the helm of Middlesbrough Football Club, plotting a way to beat Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup on Saturday. There will be a demand to do it in style.
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