Gareth Southgate Is Quite Pleased With Himself

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Middlesbrough boss Gareth Southgate has commented on his inaugural season with the club, which has seen some pretty big swings in fortunes from beating Chelsea to looking kinda crap sometimes,

“There is an enormous amount of work to be done. I learn every day.

“There are all sorts of aspects of the club you want to change and improve, but that can only be done over a period of time.

“You still have to get short-term results. In the last three months, we have played good football and we have picked up results, and we want to continue doing that.

“If you are doing that, you can start to plan for other things.”

We can only assume that “In the last three months, we have played good football…” does not include the last couple of weeks where, against Manchester City and West Ham, Middlesbrough’s football has been crap and the results even worse. Southgate has shown glimpses of managerial talent and we do think he deserves more time, it’s not like he’s taken a Champions League aspiring club and sent them down.

Interestingly, Southgate seems to be applying some sort of Business Management Bonding Conference approach to making his team gel,

“We have had discussions with the lads about what they want to do, what are their goals, what are their targets for the remaining eight games, what do they want to get from the season?

“They are very ambitious to push on and finish the season strongly. They have set themselves some targets they want to achieve and that is important.

“It is very easy for me to say to them what we want, but it is their team, they drive the team forward and it is important for them to keep the togetherness and the spirit they have shown and to finish this season very strongly.”

We imagine this is the opposite approach to what Sir Alex Ferguson might do at Manchester United, but it’ll be interesting to see how a democratically run football club pans out.