BORO-ED TIME
Since the end of 2006, Middlesbrough’s head-to-head record against Chelsea reads like the start of a Welsh place name: LLLLLLL. The aggregate score of those games is 16-0. At Stamford Bridge they haven’t won since March 1975, since when they have lost 15 and drawn seven, with an aggregate score of 35-5. There is, in short, nothing in the teams’ current positions, or in the entirety of recorded history, to give Boro any encouragement whatsoever as they head to Stamford Bridge this evening. “It’s going to be difficult,” deadpanned Stewart Downing. “We’re under no illusions about that.”
Poor, poor Stewart Downing. For it was the former England wideman who was forced to speak to his club’s official website ahead of this match, where he clearly felt obliged to be significantly more positive than would seem sensible prior to this most daunting of games, when the sum total of both the home team’s home defeats and the away team’s away wins in the last seven months is one, when another away defeat would signal relegation, and when his own all-time career record at Stamford Bridge features one victory (in which he played for 13 minutes), a handful of draws and six defeats including a 7-1 shellacking with Aston Villa in 2010 (which isn’t even the worst defeat suffered by a member of this Middlesbrough team while playing for Aston Villa away at Chelsea, with Brad Guzan having kept goal in an 8-0 thrashing two years later, as well as gifting them the opening goal on his most recent visit in 2015).
Middlesbrough are seven points from safety, meaning that even if Swansea lose every remaining game and Hull earn no more than a single draw they would have to take more points from the next three games than they have in the 12 they have played over three and a bit months since the end of January. They need at the very least as many wins from the next three games – two, maths fans – as they have earned from their last 19. They would need to up their current Premier League win percentage – running at 14.3% over the season so far – by a factor of very nearly five, to at least 66.7%. This is the size of the hole they are in.
Still, the recent draw against Manchester City, when Middlesbrough were denied victory only by a gullible referee and a preposterous dive, offers a microscopically small straw at which to clutch. “We’ve done well against the top teams over all this season,” Downing asserts, and this is kind of true: if you only counted results against the league’s best seven sides they wouldn’t be as bad as 19th – they’d be 18th, on goal difference. “We’ve got results against these teams and there’s no reason why we can’t get another. It’s an opportunity.”
Still, everyone except Middlesbrough fans can look forward to an excellent evening. Joy and heartbreak, laughter and tears, this one should have them all. Steve Agnew, Boro’s current bench-bound brainbox, has pledged that Antonio Conte’s men “will get a proper game of football”, and it would seem unreasonable to ask for more.
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Join Jacob Steinberg for piping hot MBM action of Chelsea 4-1 Middlesbrough from 8pm BST.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Hopefully 50 will turn a good point. I’m working on things. I’m writing down the pros and cons – what’s good for me and what’s not good for me, and that’s important. This time I didn’t go to treatment – I did cold turkey, and that wasn’t very nice. I want to be happy and sober. It’s about getting the happiness, getting the balance right” – Amen to that, Gazza.
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FIVER LETTERS
“In a bid to extend the knowledge of how football works even further, can I just point out that selling Jordan Pickford [Friday’s Fiver] would raise some much-needed capital rather than revenue? Don’t mention it” – Jon Clarke.
“Robin Hazlehurst [Friday’s letters] complains that someone who makes researched knowledgeable football points will be passed over for the prizeless letter o’the day in favour of someone who make bad puns. Of course they will. Has Robin never read The Fiver?” – John Stainton.
“Fascinating that you should carry a letter on Friday that was written by Tim Birdsall. I went to university with a chap called Tim Birdsall. Could it be him? Or is it someone much too young? Then I saw he’d written “....I find it difficult to carry off wearing a T-shirt in polite company without unsavoury wobbling at the best of times these days.” That sounds like my generation. Now that Friends Reunited has bitten the dust, perhaps you could corner the market in getting middle-aged men back together so they can reminisce about long forgotten aspects of life, like the Big Match, Nik Kershaw and inevitable Tory landslides - oh...” David Carr [Tim, mobile number available upon request – Fiver Ed].
“Just saw a rather large man wearing a Derby County shirt sponsored by ‘Just Eat’. I’ve never seen someone take a club sponsorship so literally” – Ben Chivers.
• Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … David Carr.
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RECOMMENDED LISTENING
Football Weekly! Football Weekly! Football Weekly!
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NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Manchester City are preparing to dust off the cheque book and blow tens of millions on a centre back for the fourth summer in a row after Pep Guardiola admitted they need back up for Vincent Kompany’s creaking limbs.
Sheffield United have announced the re-signing of striker Ched Evans from Chesterfield on a three-year contract. “I am delighted to be back,” Evans said. “I still feel I have plenty to prove in football both at club and international level.”
The football writers have made it a player of the year double for one-man midfield N’Golo Kanté.
Granit Xhaka says anyone who doesn’t like the cut of his jib can do one as he ain’t gonna tone down the tackling.
Dick Advocaat is set to cement his position as the grand old man of Dutch football by signing up for his third stint as Holland manager at the age of 70.
Tony Mowbray has told Venky’s he wants to stay at Blackburn and mastermind a return to the Championship next season. “We just need to turn the ship around and get promotion,” he trilled. In less optimistic news, the club’s director of football and operations Paul Senior has resigned 123 days after his appointment.
A student in Iran had to be taken to a police station because he looked too much like Lionel Messi. “Now people really see me as the Iranian Messi and want me to mimic everything he does. When I show up somewhere, people are really shocked,” parped Reza Parastesh, his Barcelona shirt flapping in the breeze.
STILL WANT MORE?
Our weekly Ligue 1 blog begins with “Marseille are the biggest club in France.” Something for those BTL to get their teeth into, then.
Alfie Mawson > Ashley Williams, May could prove Mazzarri’s downfall at Watford, plus eight more talking points from the weekend’s Premier League action.
In case you missed it, Tony Adams’s Granada lost again at the weekend. The difference being it was to Real Madrid. Here’s Sid Lowe.
A red card, a last-minute equaliser from Gonzalo Higuaín and Sinisa Mihajlovic going postal at Gianluca Vialli in the TV studio. Serie A is never not boring, even when there’s almost nothing to play for. Here’s Paolo Bandini.
RB Leipzig have been dubbed the ‘gravediggers of football’ but now they have joined the Champions League party, says Andy Brassell.
Chelsea to snap up Radja Nainggolan and Harry Maguire to Newcastle? It’s today’s Rumour Mill.
Granit Xhaka may yet be the answer to Arsenal’s midfield nightmares, writes Amy Lawrence.
Barney Ronay on José Mourinho. Go!
And Feyenoord may have blown it last night but Giovanni van Bronckhorst has done helluva job there, reports Ed Aarons.
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