The day we beat £28m Boro

By Dean Domerecki

This comes almost as a postscript to the article revisiting our tactics, which in general I am unhappy with. Now that we’ve beaten Middlesbrough, there is just a faint temptation to revise my opinion - but no, I’m going to be stubborn. We won despite our tactics, not because of them.

The match started with the same line-up as the Blackpool game the week before, with much the same formation. It quickly became apparent that Steve Roberts would be picking up Brian Deane whenever possible, Robin Gibson would provide cover against the threatening Christian Ziege, and Juninho would be tracked by anyone who could get near him. Looking back, the first half was tight, with the sides fairly evenly balanced. Our midfield was disciplined and mobile, and the back four played much less deep than usual, pushing midfield further up and compressing the play, so denying Boro the space and time to create anything useful from the middle of the pitch. Boro’s goal was not the result of any great play, but rather fortuitous, even had the ball not been handled at least once, maybe twice, which Steve Lodge either missed or interpreted ‘differently’. Still, calm down, it doesn’t matter now.

The first 25 minutes of the second half was all Wrexham. Gibbo seemed to push up further, rather causing Ziege to worry about him than vice versa. Faulconbridge and Neil Roberts chased everything that moved up front, and prevented Boro building from the back; when Connolly came on, he carried on just the same. Gibbo’s goal was magnificent - he was aware enough to sense the space through the middle, cut inside and beat his man on the inside shoulder. Ferguson’s pass, absolute perfection, was collected in his stride by Gibbo and a left-foot finish beat Schwarzer from 15 yards. Mayhem in the stands was matched by utter disintegration of the Boro team. They suddenly looked vulnerable, with Juninho and Gascoigne having to come very deep to collect the ball, midfield being controlled by Wrexham(!!). This, unfortunately for Boro, completely disrupted their shape and eventually allowed Ferguson the space to surge forward; he was allowed to drift inside onto his favoured foot, got outside the challenge of the last defender and found the same part of the net that Gibson had with a fantastic finish.

Boro woke up to the fact that they were about to go out of the Cup and poured forward frantically. Owen and Ridler replaced Gibson and Steve Roberts respectively; any fears about a loss of momentum were unfounded, as Wrexham continually repelled whatever Boro could produce in attack. Boro could, might, and should have equalised - but they didn’t, and, frankly, they didn’t deserve a draw. The team looked to have lost their drive as soon as Wrexham applied pressure in the second half, and by the time they started to respond it was too late. Wrexham simply wanted to win more than Boro did, and how happy I am to say that.

So is it churlish of me, after such a victory, to say that tactics still have a negative contribution to our performance? Surely the management team deserve some credit? Well, consider these questions: 1) Did we, until Connolly came on, produce a single threat down the left? 2) Did our cohesion and ability to string passes together appear improved by not defending so deep? 3) Why did our midfield suddenly seem to have real bite? If you say, as the management team might, “We played in effect the same system as normal, and we beat Boro with it, so it can’t be all that bad”, one response might be “If that’s the case, why can we beat Boro but not Blackpool or Cambridge with that same system?”. The thought then arises as to whether players know but usually fail to carry out the pattern of play worked on in training, or whether in fact they are carrying it out, but are so inflexible that they, or the management team, cannot adapt their tactical play during a match. The real difference, surely, is that the players really wanted this one; is that a motivational plus for the management team for this game, or a motivational minus for the league games? After all, a good cup run is trivial compared to staying in Division 2, and this is the mystery - how the same eleven men can look so poor against Blackpool, but beat Boro.

Enough of this brow-furrowing. Whatever the shortcomings of management and players, for one glorious day they all played their part and all deserve massive credit. Fourteen players were, to a man, magnificent - they ran, blocked, chased and tackled (and saved!) with real passion, real commitment. They threw off the shackles of poor league form and turned over a Premiership club with a team costing £28 million. They were all giants at the time of asking, and for that they deserve their day in the sun. Eleven thousand people will remember their performance with huge pride, and for those people the world is, for a time at least, a happier place. This is the real achievement for those fourteen men, and I hope that they feel this too. Well done Wrexham, well done. RP