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As I watched the game from the bar of the Holiday Inn hotel outside of Bristol Airport - £109 a night and the stench of pig sh*t thrown in for free - I felt nothing but sorrow and sympathy. Not for the fans, not for the players, but for Steve McClaren.
I have publicly stated there is something deeply annoying about him and he has a face you'd really like to slap, and I only said it half in jest. As a Boro fan I was always aware he wasn't capable of doing the job, but nonetheless, to berate him so viciously and so personally as fans did last night was verging on the psychotic.
Let's just say this plainly. It's wrong.
To direct so much abuse at one man, even a gingery freckled man, is simply disproportionate. He hasn't broken in your house, screwed your daughter and taken a sh*t on your floor. Just remember that he was invited to take the job, the real honour of managing his nation's football team, and is paid handsomely for doing so. If you want to have a go at anyone, it's the FA who should be at the dirty end of the stick.
McClaren may well be out of his depth but he's not deliberately being awful. Actually, he's probably doing the best he can. Yes, it's not good enough, but he was asked to do this. He's doing what he can. By all means be critical; we all are, but the personal vilification of him as a man is, at least to me, psychologically disturbed.
It's not as though Steve has personally debased a set of high-achieving players. He's not corrupted something that was pure and wonderful.
Are the fans berating him the ones who bought the golden generation idea? The very idea sold to them by an anti-Sven press who wanted him out and an Englishman in? Think on and work that one out.
At the very least, the visceral berating of McClaren is confused. Even if he isn't a great man-manager or motivator, he still has to manage a team of average talent. Don't forget, most journalists have to keep players sweet so they can get stories. It's much easier for the papers to slaughter the manager but ultimately, it's not the manager to blame, it is the players. He can't make them control the ball well or pass it accurately. No international manager can do that.
Does anyone really think that booing the team after ten minutes will somehow give them confidence to play well? Clearly, they are playing with fear and inhibition just as they did at the World Cup. They play scared because they fear the very reaction we saw writ large on Wednesday. Our unreasonable glorification of them at club level and the even more unreasonable international expectations of their talents is one of the root causes of the last 40 years of mediocrity and failure. The pressure is unbearable for all concerned.
Sod the money, the egos and the tactics, at the end of all of that they're just f***ing humans with actual emotions. I know in part their role as glamorous rich kids is to be our whipping boys as we grind out a daily existence, fair enough, but there's got to be some balance. Yes it's bloody annoying that they play poorly but they're not evil. To excoriate McClaren as though he's done something really bad, as though he's a kind of war criminal, is plain wrong. More than that, it's mentally ill. You could see the sickness in the eyes of the fans that were abusing him. That's not normal. Get some lithium or Prozac please.
Anyone with an ounce of humanity would have felt sorry for him last night. You could see the ugly, vile side of humanity. You could see how lynchings happen. I felt at one point that if they could have, they may well have killed him.
I don't blame him for not doing the press conference either. To sit in front of a group of people who in essence want to say "just admit you're crap Steve" or "you're a bit of a w*nker aren't you...why don't you just f*ck off?" is not something you or I would ever have tolerate or even be in a position to have to endure. Nobody should have to. Not even England's manager. It's inhuman and glories in the base side of human nature.
His position may be untenable - though don't expect any other manager to achieve much more - but we should never forget he is just a bloke like you and me, and he deserves to be treated like a sentient creature, not a piece of meat to abuse for your own sadistic pleasure.
The anti-anti-McClaren backlash starts here.
John Nicholson
I have publicly stated there is something deeply annoying about him and he has a face you'd really like to slap, and I only said it half in jest. As a Boro fan I was always aware he wasn't capable of doing the job, but nonetheless, to berate him so viciously and so personally as fans did last night was verging on the psychotic.
Let's just say this plainly. It's wrong.
To direct so much abuse at one man, even a gingery freckled man, is simply disproportionate. He hasn't broken in your house, screwed your daughter and taken a sh*t on your floor. Just remember that he was invited to take the job, the real honour of managing his nation's football team, and is paid handsomely for doing so. If you want to have a go at anyone, it's the FA who should be at the dirty end of the stick.
McClaren may well be out of his depth but he's not deliberately being awful. Actually, he's probably doing the best he can. Yes, it's not good enough, but he was asked to do this. He's doing what he can. By all means be critical; we all are, but the personal vilification of him as a man is, at least to me, psychologically disturbed.
It's not as though Steve has personally debased a set of high-achieving players. He's not corrupted something that was pure and wonderful.
Are the fans berating him the ones who bought the golden generation idea? The very idea sold to them by an anti-Sven press who wanted him out and an Englishman in? Think on and work that one out.
At the very least, the visceral berating of McClaren is confused. Even if he isn't a great man-manager or motivator, he still has to manage a team of average talent. Don't forget, most journalists have to keep players sweet so they can get stories. It's much easier for the papers to slaughter the manager but ultimately, it's not the manager to blame, it is the players. He can't make them control the ball well or pass it accurately. No international manager can do that.
Does anyone really think that booing the team after ten minutes will somehow give them confidence to play well? Clearly, they are playing with fear and inhibition just as they did at the World Cup. They play scared because they fear the very reaction we saw writ large on Wednesday. Our unreasonable glorification of them at club level and the even more unreasonable international expectations of their talents is one of the root causes of the last 40 years of mediocrity and failure. The pressure is unbearable for all concerned.
Sod the money, the egos and the tactics, at the end of all of that they're just f***ing humans with actual emotions. I know in part their role as glamorous rich kids is to be our whipping boys as we grind out a daily existence, fair enough, but there's got to be some balance. Yes it's bloody annoying that they play poorly but they're not evil. To excoriate McClaren as though he's done something really bad, as though he's a kind of war criminal, is plain wrong. More than that, it's mentally ill. You could see the sickness in the eyes of the fans that were abusing him. That's not normal. Get some lithium or Prozac please.
Anyone with an ounce of humanity would have felt sorry for him last night. You could see the ugly, vile side of humanity. You could see how lynchings happen. I felt at one point that if they could have, they may well have killed him.
I don't blame him for not doing the press conference either. To sit in front of a group of people who in essence want to say "just admit you're crap Steve" or "you're a bit of a w*nker aren't you...why don't you just f*ck off?" is not something you or I would ever have tolerate or even be in a position to have to endure. Nobody should have to. Not even England's manager. It's inhuman and glories in the base side of human nature.
His position may be untenable - though don't expect any other manager to achieve much more - but we should never forget he is just a bloke like you and me, and he deserves to be treated like a sentient creature, not a piece of meat to abuse for your own sadistic pleasure.
The anti-anti-McClaren backlash starts here.
John Nicholson
