Middlesbrough vs West Ham United: match preview/s

Middlesbrough vs West Ham (Premier League)
West Ham vs Middlesbrough (FA Cup Semi Final)

Here we go with a double whammy, pre-match preview as yet again the fate of the Gods sees us take on a team twice in a week. On Easter Monday we make the trek to the Riverside to face Middlesbrough in a Premier League encounter, on Sunday the two sides reconvene at Villa Park to settle which of us goes onto to the Cup Final and a guaranteed place in next year’s Uefa Cup competition.

Their season, so far, has been a rollercoaster that Disneyland would be proud of developing. Their have been zeniths and nadirs a plenty, and the league form throughout the season has been far from satisfactory at points. They have incurred defeats at home to Sunderland (0-2), Charlton (0-3) as well as a 0-4 tonking by the footballing tour de force that is Aston Villa.

This game was the final straw for season ticket holder, Mark Davidson, who decided to bypass the Boro Customer Complaints department and head straight to the Technical Area and fast bowl his season ticket at gaffer, Steve McClaren. Fortunately for him, technology has not made it up to the North East yet so they still have the heavyweight book versions of season tickets, rather than him having to backhand a credit card in a ninja style.

He did get his ticket back and will be probably a bit regretful of his impetuous actions as the following week, Boro beat that small team from Fulham, 3-0 at the Riverside to kickstart a mini revival. Their league position is still not great, they currently lie 14th in the table, 6 points and 5 places behind us but they have demonstrated that they are suited to cup football.

They have reached the FA Cup semi finals with some fairly cushy draws, albeit they have made hard work of getting through. Rounds 3 & 4 saw them beat Nuneaton and Coventry City, though they drew both games away and had to get their opponents back to the Riverside to finish the job off. The fifth round saw a straightforward 2-0 away to Preston and their first Premiership opponents were Charlton, who they beat in two games to reach the semis.

In the midst of all this, they have been competing in the UEFA cup and have also reached the semi finals of that competition. Along the way they have seen off lots of teams that would be more of threat on a scrabble board than a football pitch (Xanthi, Dnipro) though the latter rounds have thrown up AC Roma and the Swiss side Basle and they have performed minor second leg miracles to progress in the competition.

This leaves them something of fixture backlog and they face 5 games in 12 days if you count from the Charlton replay to the FA Cup semi. No doubt this will result in some injury, some suspension, some fatigue and some prioritisation so I am going to abstain from trying to second guess the line ups for either game and just give a rundown of the key players to look out for.

Essentially, Middlesbrough are a team founded on a combination of youth and experience and the basis is very much on the two extremes of these elements. Representing having been around the blockness, Gareth Southgate at centre back has been kept away from the league performances lately and saved for the cup games. You all know what to expect from Gareth who is professionalism personified, he rarely makes a mistake and little gets past him. The only area of his game that will truly benefit us is if he steps up to take the deciding penalty.

The wily forward duo of Mark “Fat Aussie W***er” Viduka and former Chelsea man, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink have been in amongst the goals of late (15 and 16 respectively this season), so much so that they have managed to consign Yakubu Ayegeni to the subs bench. Viduka has lots of skill and the ability to hold the ball up well, Jimmy is slowing down a bit but his ability to strike from a distance still renders him a danger.

Keeper Mark Swartzer is also at the top end of the Boro age range and has been both hero and villain at the club this season. He put in a transfer request in January but after no real takers appeared, he has knuckled down and put in a string of fine performances, seemingly healing any rift between himself and the club.

On the youth end of the scale, there are a total of 13 Middlesbrough academy graduates listed in the first team squad, all of them under the age of 24 and apart from yet another Aussie keeper, they are all local lads. The club currently have more England internationals (at all levels) then any other team in the Premiership and also top the charts when you measure the number of teenagers in top flight senior squads. They may just edge the young and Englishness claim that we make and it is probably fitting that our semi final takes place on St Georges Day rather than Spain vs the League of Nations set for the Saturday.

The pick of the kids is probably left winger, Stuart Downing, who has established himself as first team player and is around the edges of the national team squad. He is pacy with good distribution, though this may be absent from the league game if McClaren goes for their other left wing prospect, Adam Johnson.

Other young pups enjoying a run out in the team are defensive midfielder, Lee Cattermole, a combatitive player with a sensitive, feminine side, midfielder, James Morrison, who is rumoured to have the heaviest pair of eyebrows in FA Cup history, left back prospect, Andrew Taylor and the versatile, Stuart Parnaby.

The two midfield catalysts to keep this blend of the old and new together sit in the middle of the park in the form of George Boateng and Brazilian Fabio Rochembach. The former is the pivotal character, taking on responsibility for the ball winning in the style of Makelele, the latter has recently found his form and has start to have an influence on games, his confidence demonstrated by his fortuitous opening goal on Wednesday night. Again, a partnership for Nige and Mullins to get stuck into though they would be advised to avoid Fabio’s often flailing arms.



League Game Prediction

For this game, I am going to make the fairly obvious claim that this is going to be a reserve team clash masquerading as a Premier League fixture. They will certainly have Bucharest on Thursday night foremost in their minds and both coaches will not want to give too much away tactically or risk injury to key players.

It is very difficult to call it so I’ll plump for 1-0, Zamora the goalscorer.

FA Cup Semi Prediction

I was entertained in Ken’s Café (and whoever is in charge of spellchecker and put the accent on café has obviously never eaten in Ken’s) before the Charlton game by eavesdropping on the discussions surrounding what my brother termed semi final maths. This involved our surprisingly numerous bunch of supporters with the same number of points as the Latvian entry in the last Eurovision song contest discussing the likelihood of entrance to the West Ham equivalent of the chocolate factory. Much hope was pinned on the fact that your mate had used your season ticket number for the Norwich game or that a large contingent of season ticket holders were perhaps vicars and therefore worked Sundays. Having got all of ticket panic out of the way, we can now concentrate on worrying about the real deal, the football.

What we will essentially see is two teams that contain a high number of youngsters. Our own experience this season, re-enforced by the experiences of Middlesbrough and even Arsenal are that a good young team can put in a top class performance at times but the lack of experience can cause a lack of consistency. We seem to have saved all our best performances for the FA Cup in recent times, Boro have put many of their better performances together in fits and starts throughout the season, though more of the superior operations have come lately.

Fatigue must be a factor that weighs in our favour, to play the number of important games that they have over the last month, especially playing two games a week and having to travel to Romania three days before the semi can only have an impact, especially in the opening and closing 30 minutes of the game, the traditional time when big match fatigue usually kicks in.

Talking of big matches, there will certainly be a psychological element to this game. Whilst they have more experienced players in their number, many of our first teamers have been through the pressure cooker environment of the play offs and having experienced both defeat and victory at the final stage would have stood us in good stead for what is to come.

Having gone through all of the sensible rationale, I am down the superstitious stuff and here I can see that playing in a claret and blue arena can only be to our advantage. Similarly, as long as I don’t forget my lucky scarf, don’t step on any cracks in the pavement and throw under any birds with the runs in the next week, everything will be ok.

This game is way too important for me to objectively try to predict scorelines so I am throw myself at the mercy of the aforementioned God plus Allah, Jah, Sat Guru and Paolo that it will be Hammers vs Scousers in the final.

Enjoy the games.