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Woodgate Gone. Warnock In


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when both tony pulis and neil warnock have manged your club within 1 year of each other, you know your clubs going through some serious ***.

Getting relegated to League 1 would've been pretty embarrassing too

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8 hours ago, Smogzilla said:

I've just seen this on reddit and thought I'd repost it here. "Highlights" of Woodys post match interviews 😬:

 

(WARNING: Long)

With Neil Warnock's arrival ending Jonathan Woodgate's tenure here at Boro I think it's only right to bring to your attention some incredible moments from some infamous press conferences / interviews he's conducted in his sole season in charge. 

In September Boro lost 4-1 at home to Sheffield Wednesday, all the goals came inside 34 minutes. The team were vociferously booed off at half time, in his post match interview Woodgate simply said:

"It’s not really the situation you want at half-time, going in there 4-1 down".

The media missteps continued as a week later boro went down 2-1 at Birmingham, afterwards he partakes in a toe-curling interview with Sky's Caroline Barker, the start of a truly bizarre feud between the two of them, in which Barker probes a dejected Woodgate live on sky sports with:

"Today couldve been 5 or 6, you have West Brom and Fulham coming up, if you play this way again theyre going to murder you arent they?" https://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/11827720/woodgate-we-move-on

Following that interview, Boro would go on to score a total of 0 goals in the next 4 games. At the end of October he conducted his most infamous interview that didn't go nearly as viral as it deserved. I'll quote him verbatim and provide you the link to the audio for this because it's quite something:

"Nah it's lying though, people say that the league table tells the truth. It's not. Its lying" https://twitter.com/primevideosport/status/1189615740934152193

A month later boro were dismantled 4-0 by 'rivals' Leeds in which Woodgate, following this game conducted an interview with the Leeds media in which he beamed about the "unbelievable" reception he got by the home fans, admitted that he wanted to wave back to show support but it wasn't appropriate given the score, that they were a "top club" and that "they're some train to get on it'll only go one way". It's perhaps worth noting we're not even into December yet, he's only been in charge for 4 months at this point. https://twitter.com/lufc/status/1201490875618119683

A mini resurgence in form over christmas came to an end at Fulham, another match live on sky which meant, another toe-curling Barker vs Woodgate interview. Again I have to provide a link to the interview so you can understand just how awkward it is. https://twitter.com/boropolis/status/1218305000243388416 

Barker leads with "One shot on target was there a call for Fletcher to be brought on?" 

Woodgate responds with a prickly jab of his own "I wouldn't say so, you should be a manager you" 

Barker is quick to respond "that's why I'm not" 

Woodgate is faster still with his dismissive retaliation "yeah yeah you're probably right" You can see a glint in his eye, he's thinking hes 1-0 up on her

Barker attempts to rephrase the initial question "Was there no thinking in your mind that he should have come on earlier?" 

The verbal tennis kicks up a gear as the two commence in a rally spanning about half a second

"not really no"

"why not"

"I didn't want him to"

Barker stammers, as she tries to form another response, Woodgate butts in, sensing shes on the ropes he comes out swinging

"look I pick the team and you dont" Game, set and match you can see he's thinking to himself. Unfortunately, verbal sparring with a female journalist on live tv isn't quite the impressive achievement he appeared to think it was in the heat of the moment. 

3 successive 1-0 defeats to Leeds, Barnsley and Luton followed, the latter a home game in which Luton ended a run of losing 12 successive away games. Woodgate admitted after the game that:

"I don't blame the fans for booing because I'd have done exactly the same"

He also, gave an insight into his motivational half time team talks:

"I said to them at half-time that the positive is, you can't play any worse than that. Actually they did" https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/jonathan-woodgate-booing-stands-middlesbroughs-17755926

This leads up until this very weekend, the championship restart. Leading up to the home game against Swansea, Woodgate spoke about how sharp the players had been in training and about the importance of a positive start to the game. After 34 minutes Swansea had hit the post, missed a header from 2 inches out and were already 3 goals to the good. It would finish 3-0 seemingly because of an unspoken mercy rule in which Swansea treated the remaining 56 minutes like a park kickabout. After the game on a webcam interview, answering a question about how he found the alien matchday experience, he responded with a now trademark response of

"So the experience wasn't good at all for me, hopefully in the next game is...erm....listen... if we have our fans there it's going to be a lot better"  

https://twitter.com/pmforster/status/1274354749110923264

Despite all this chicanery, it's a real shame that it didn't work out here for him. And it's a shame that with the ghost of Tony Pulis still lingering over the current squad of players, that we've yet again had to flip the clubs vision and reach out for the oldest hand available in Warnock. We can all take some solace in the promise that if anyone can outdo Woodgates interview tomfoolery, its probably the Warnock.   

Thick as a submarine door would probably be the best description for Woodgate and the run in with the female journalist didn't show him in the best light either did it. 

It's a shame that Gibson wasn't able to spot this before he appointed him. 

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I have no beef with managers giving it back to reporters as some of their questions and remarks are just plain stupid, but you need to be quick and with a sense of humour to do so and it doesn't seem that Woodgate posseses either of those traits. Strachan despite his failures has that and could make me laugh. My favourite is: Reporter "Gordon, a quick word?" Strachan "Velocity!" and he walks on.

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You need to back up an obnoxious attitude with results which Strachan and Woodgate never really did for us. 

It turns out the female reporter was right with Woodgate as well.

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10 hours ago, White Band said:

If the players suddenly improve, it could simply be that they are being coached more effectively rather than that they weren't bothering before. 

That's possible 😄 

In my own working life when the management were muppets I and others made our own plan and got on with it. Not everything translates perfectly into football but I remember one of the greats from the 60's talking about preparations for an England match, there weren't any. The players turned up and sorted out the game plan between themselves. Those days are gone but I still find the bounce back factor hard to stomach at times.

I still hope it happens though as whatever my view of the professionalism of any of the players I don't want Boro to be relegated.

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1 hour ago, Borodane said:

I have no beef with managers giving it back to reporters as some of their questions and remarks are just plain stupid, but you need to be quick and with a sense of humour to do so and it doesn't seem that Woodgate posseses either of those traits. Strachan despite his failures has that and could make me laugh. My favourite is: Reporter "Gordon, a quick word?" Strachan "Velocity!" and he walks on.

I'm sure when managing someone else who Boro beat when asked in what area Middlesbrough were better he said "Mainly in that big green area out there."

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7 minutes ago, Woof Woof said:

That's possible 😄 

In my own working life when the management were muppets I and others made our own plan and got on with it. Not everything translates perfectly into football but I remember one of the greats from the 60's talking about preparations for an England match, there weren't any. The players turned up and sorted out the game plan between themselves. Those days are gone but I still find the bounce back factor hard to stomach at times.

I still hope it happens though as whatever my view of the professionalism of any of the players I don't want Boro to be relegated.

I've had jobs under inept managers where it became impossible to do a good job effectively. My 'work' time was spent on all the things the manager wanted which I knew were not going to achieve what was needed.  I was then going home and working to midnight or beyond one the things which really needed to be done to keep the project going; but there were some things I couldn't do because they would have gone against things the manager wanted in a way which would have been visible to other people outside the project (including funders and international collaborators).  The sheer hours I was working meant that, despite my best efforts, I could not work as effectively as I would have done under a competent manager. Effort does not always correlate with performance; especially in a toxic working environment. 

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Not gonna lie. I can't stand Warnock as a human being. But hopefully he gets enough out of our players to keep us the Championship and then we find a younger, hungrier less ****ish coach to take us forward. 

He's a huge SG fan, so will work hard to do his bae proud at least. 

(Edit: Also said I couldn't stand Woody as a human being and he was thick as ****. Hope this doesn't follow the same trajectory 😅)

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A question for the older Boro fans - have we ever followed one managerial appointment with a similar one? We seem to swing wildly from one extreme to the other, either in terms of playing style or background and experience. I honestly can't think of more polar appointments than Pulis after Monk, Woodgate after Pulis and now Warnock after Woodgate.

As to Warnock, he loves Steve Gibson and is probably delighted to have a crack at managing us after 71 years of rehearsals. Given what he achieved with a frankly crap Cardiff squad, I'm confident he'll keep us up. It won't be pretty to watch but if I was a Charlton, Hull or Huddersfield fan right now, I'd be thinking "well, they're safe".

Let's survive this season, and then we can worry about Warnock blowing the entire summer transfer budget on Jordan Hugill, who returns in an eight-figure deal "with a point to prove".

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Interestingly, looking at win percentage of our manager history, this is what it tells us:

1 - Harold Shepherdson (52.94%)

2 - Aitor Karanka (47.06%)

3 - Garry Monk (46.2%)

4 - Jack Charlton (45.6%)

5 - Andy Walker (45%)

 

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10 minutes ago, VikingKingAdam said:

Far too late to be saved unfortunately Stephen has made the same mistake again when he put Southgate in charge who still has no clue and is a FA yes man. Woodgate assembled a team of clowns and were all on a jolly until their luck finally ran out. Warnock is a real man, a mans man and he will have these snowflakes back in order in no time at all, or there will be no space for them in his team. The only better choice would have been Sam, but I am please we got Neil and that Jonathan Has gone. 

First of all, welcome to the forum VKA. Just to let you know how we do things here. 
All opinions and comments are welcome but we tend to steer away from inflammatory name calling. It also helps if you explain the reasoning behind your thoughts as this will help promote discussion and interaction

 However I look forward to seeing more from you. 
Take care 👍

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