Phoney War Flashbacks

PRE-SEASON eh? It can drag at times. Days of ITK whipers, wishful thinking and idle speculation punctuated by  the odd purchase out of the blue and pictures of a new boy with shirt and scarf aloft then back to the humdrum of links and snippets and gossip and reports of our heroes crushing unknown opposition in distant foreign lands.

We are led to believe there are some talks coming to the “dotting Is and crossing Ts” stage and there will be some inward activity next week to excite and entertain the twitching twitter masses and anxious on-line observers.

In the meantime, here’s a few things to read to get you through the tedium of the window Phoney War,  flashbacks to bits boxed up in the blog attic from previous pre-seasons.

Just to keep morale up in the trenches here are three bits, one from a pre-season under each of the previous three bosses. Forgive the lack of paragraph breaks, the coding didn’t survive the big switch from the old steam-driven platform.

First up, the surreal sonic culture shock of watching Tony Mowbray’s Boro batter mighty Falkirk  in Gaelic!

Then, a flashback to the last time a heavily accented boss brought about a cultural revolution and summer of the Great Jockification when Boro did their shopping early and spent heavily getting the manager exactly the players he wanted.

And lastly, the post-relegation summer when Gareth Southgate set an incredible/delusional  target and said his side were setting out to treble their strike rate and blast their way to promotion.

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MEANWHILE, Keeneth Omeruo has confirmed on twitter the worst kept secret in football: that he is coming back to Boro.

Many people – nervous types who didn’t believe what EVERYONE was telling them – had the jitters over this and were worried that ‘Arry was going to wind down his window and lure him away to sit on the bench at QPR or that Hull would sign him.

From May the Gazette have been saying that Big Ken wanted to come back to Boro. He said it himself  Karanka said it. Karanka said Jose had said.  Ken loved it at Boro. He loved the set up, the spirit in the squad,  the area, the fans, the intensity of the training and the fact he was getting pitch time. And Chelsea loved that he was training in exactly the way Jose does. At Boro he is with a manager who demands the same mentality as at Chelsea.

Chelsea coaches are frequent visitors to Boro. It is part of the link-up the clubs have, there is a free flow of information between them.  The coaches and backroom staff like Bryan English come to Rockliffe to observe the progress of their boys and to help with advice on tailored training and fitness work. It is a relationship that is flourishing at every level not just between Aitor and Jose and one that puts Boro in poll position when it comes to making loan requests. We should see the fruit of that very soon. It is no secret that Boro are trying to get a few more in from Chelsea. We may see some movement on that soon.